


The Untitled BtVS/Supernatural AU Crossover

by beetle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:14:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Devil's Trap had ended differently? Written for the wonderful, the amazing, the Tabaqui, one of my favoritest people in the world. Per these prompts:</p>
<p>Ooooh, character study. Ummmm...<br/>Spike.<br/>Supernatural.<br/>Prompt...Okay - this song (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Didn't-We-Meet-lyrics-Alice-Cooper/CC1651609DBBBEF648256C48000960AE). Alice Cooper, doncherknow. :)<br/>Please don't kill anybody? And i'm not skeered of Wincest.<br/>POV is 2nd or 3rd, your choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

The drive back to the motorlodge is long and silent.   
  
It's not an uncomfortable silence, or an uncompanionable one, but it is thoughtful. And though Spike's got plenty to think about, and just barely enough energy to do it with. Sam should have no energy at all. Not for all the heavy lifting he seems to be doing with that dauntingly complex mind of his.   
  
"Penny for 'em, Galahad," he asks nonchalantly. So that Sam can ignore or answer as he will.   
  
"Wasn't the electron enough? Did we really need its two fat cousins, the muon and the tau?" Sam asks so seriously, Spike's surprised by the slightly hysterical laugh and murmured apology that follow. "Even if I had thoughts, they wouldn't be worth a penny, right now. And all I've got goin' on behind my eyes are lights and pretty colors."  
  
"Somehow, I doubt that."  
  
"Seriously, Will. I'm fried."   
  
"Then I take it a side trip to  _Jack-In-The-Box_  is out of order?"   
  
That suggestion is received with an elegant shudder that's answer enough for Spike, who doesn't have much of an appetite, either. Not after tonight.   
  
He concentrates on the road for a few silent miles. One thing he really misses about being a vampire--besides, oh, everything--is being able to  _see_ , even in total darkness. Dawn's more than an hour off and the night is still nearly impenetrable, even with the Impala's brights ahead and a sickle-moon and dense smattering of stars above.  
  
(The possibility that he may need  _corrective lenses_ , not just his bloody reading glasses, is a thought Spike's not ready to invite into the parlor, let alone entertain.)   
  
"How many times do you think we'll have to brush our teeth before everything stops tasting like incense?" Sam asks, burrowing down a bit more into the passenger seat.   
  
"Dunno . . . six--seven hundred times, tops. I was a bit liberal with the stuff, wasn't I?"   
  
"Yeah." Sam laughs again, making a weird face and glancing over at Spike. As always, it feels like being seen into, but like always Spike can hold Sam's blue-grey gaze without flinching, without thinking about all the awful things he'd done, once upon a time. Or thinking about the not-at-all awful things he'd like to do with Sam. Even with the gentle warmth of lingering eyes and smile on his skin like sunlight—  
  
Then Spike breaks the gaze. His eyes skitter to the darkness ahead and he eases the car back into the proper lane. "Right. Do I actually have to dig in my pockets for change, or are you gonna share without further prodding?"   
  
"You're a good man," Sam says softly and that, finally, makes Spike laugh.   
  
"Not me, mate. Not hardly." He wants to see the look on Sam's face, but feels it's best to keep his eyes on the road. There's a lot of nothing on this highway, for forty minutes in each direction, but it doesn't hurt to be careful. It does--for a moment, anyway--hurt to be the focus of Sam's high regard, which--upon making him feel unaccountably mighty and clean--makes him feel small and grimy.   
  
"I mean it, William."   
  
" _You're_  a good man, mate." Unquestionably the best Spike's ever met, though he's never gone so far as to say. A century ago, wearing his heart on his sleeve had gotten him into more trouble than he could've possibly imagined. He likes to think he's learned to play such things closer to the vest.   
  
"You're a better man than you'll ever give yourself credit for, and I'm proud of you."   
  
"What's this?" Spike shifts uncomfortably, flexes his hands on the steering wheel. "Bolster Spike's ego? Ta, for the cheerleader bit, mate, but--"   
  
"You're amazing." That intense conviction he drags into everything. Sam Winchester has spoken: Spike's a good and amazing man, and that's that.   
  
If only it was that easy.  
  
"Well," Spike says, more a clearing of the throat than a statement. Then: "Know a little something about demons, is all. From the inside out. Comes in handy pallin' around with a Winchester , as I do."   
  
"If you hadn't been there, tonight—"   
  
"You'd have got it sorted, quick enough."  _Spike_  has spoken, and that's that.   
  
Sam is shaking his head, part skepticism, part horrified wonder. "I've seen some shit, but nothing like that. Nothing like . . . there were so  _many_  of them. He was literally beset by demons, trying to tear their way out of him."  
  
"Didn't help that the silly git refused to let 'em go." Spike glares into the night. "Can only reckon he didn't completely understand what he was doing in the first place. . . taking and holding all that evil inside himself. Probably went blunderin' in, trying to save the day, only to tumble arse-over-tit, himself. Was always like that--too stupid to be anything but noble."   
  
"If he'd let them go, they'd have possessed Dean, you, me--anyone they could get their hooks into. The havoc that many demons coulda wreaked, if he'd let himself slip for one moment--"  
  
"Shouldn't have been demon-catching in the first place, should he?" But it's half-hearted criticism at best. Not the boy's fault he got the fuzzy end of the champion lollipop--the booby-prize to beat all bloody booby-prizes. A man can only play the hand the Powers have dealt him.  
  
Spike knows a little something about that, as well.  
  
"I can see why Dean was drawn to him, stayed with him." Sam sounds torn between graciousness and bitterness. "Why he fell in love with him."  
  
"Oh, I won't deny he's a bit of alright. If you like that kill-'em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em-out mentality. And they both do, obviously," Spike adds after a moment of consideration, then hurries on before Sam thinks he's got bit by the same bug Dean had been. "I, however, prefer my . . . partners with a bit more brains and a lot less recklessness."   
  
A quick glance over at Sam tells Spike nothing he couldn't have already guessed. Sam's brooding into the night, biting his lip.   
  
A change of subject, so to speak, is in order. "It's amazing Sunnyhell didn't kill him."   
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sam perk up a bit. "I keep forgetting you knew him from way back when. One of the fabled Sunnydale alums." Sam's voice falters, but only briefly. "Dad used to tell us secondhand stories about that place, but most hunters steered clear of Slayer territory after that were-hunter, Kane Wyckoff, turned up missing."   
  
"Smart hunters." Spike doesn't know who Kane Wyckoff is, but he knows how well Slayers—especially Buffy--take to being interfered with.   
  
"Can I ask—I mean, if it's not too weird for you to talk about—before. . ." Those solemn blue eyes, tinged red with irritation and weariness are on Spike again, weighing him carefully. Its distracting enough that the car weaves right, then left as Spike corrects it.  
  
"Told you, mate, you can ask me anything. Even if it's about Sunnydale, or L.A. " And Spike  _has_  told him, but Sam, ever the bleeding heart, has a tendency to tiptoe around Spike's life--especially anywhen before the shanshu and after 1881. "Carte blanche. Hit me."  
  
"Alright." That sunshine-feeling again, only stronger and more intent: the focused ray of Sam's curiosity. "What was he  _really_  like? I mean, back then, before the--demon-catching? He seems--you made him sound like Joe-ordinary, but he's. . . ." Sam gestures vaguely, futilely, at a loss to describe the strange, hair-standing-on-end feeling of  _other_  that even had Spike glancing over his shoulder and getting goosebumps.  
  
 _Not the question I was hoping for, but I guess I should've expected it._  "Yeah, I know what you mean. And he is different. A lot different. But time changes a man. So do demons, whether literal or figurative." And even though he can't see it, he can sense Sam's grasping at straws, hoping against all reason that Dean's god has feet of clay.   
  
Spike almost hates to disabuse him of  _that_  notion. Almost. "Tell ya what hasn't changed about him, though. He still loves with his whole heart. There's not a damn thing he wouldn't do for someone he loves. Your brother's a very lucky man."  
  
Sam  _hmm_ s, and looks out the window once again. "Then they're both lucky, I'd say," he tells the night. And if there's irony there, even Spike's finely-honed sarcasmeter isn't picking it up. So he nods once.   
  
Sam's focus on the night suddenly becomes too pointed. "Did you and he ever--?"  
  
"What?  _No_!" Spike exclaims, sounding highly offended. One would think he hadn't had his share of Big-Bad-corrupts-the-oh-so-corruptible-Scooby fantasies.   
  
 _Wasn't a-one of 'em I didn't wanna taste and take, at one point or other. They were so young, so clean—and even when they weren't so young or so clean, they_ shone.  
  
Dean shines in the same way. Might've been Spike's type, too, if he hadn't met Sam first. There's a bit too much of the Marlboro Man in the elder Winchester, but there are depths hidden behind that facade, that those assessing hazel eyes only hint at.  
  
Depths that kept him by the side of a man who was being devoured by evil from the inside out.   
  
Spike shivers as his skin prickles in gooseflesh and he glances over his shoulder instinctively.  
  
Yeah, Dean might've been Spike's type if Dean's boyfriend weren't capable of swallowing souls whole, whenever he's so motivated. And goddamnit, if he doesn't nearly park the Impala in an oak tree that's growing dangerously close to the road shoulder.  
  
 _Bloody hell. Best keep my eyes on the road, and my hands upon the wheel, like the poet said._  
  
Spike drums  _Wipe-out_  on the wheel with nervous, calloused fingertips, slightly yellowed from nicotine. Waits for that cold feeling of being watched and pondered—sized up by something large enough for him to disappear in forever--to pass before saying: "Anyway, it's not like we were best mates, havin' sleepovers and such--braidin' each other's bloody hair."   
  
He can all but hear the hint of a smirk that Sam hides under a pretense of scratching his nose. "But you did each other's laundry often enough." That smirk has turned into a full, all-American, annoyingly unrepentant grin.   
  
"Told you I hate it when you pick memories out of my head." Not that Sam does it often, and not that his psychic gift hadn't been slowly fading. At least before tonight.  
  
That laugh, the one Spike's been hearing more of but still doesn't hear often enough, and the barely-there-then-gone brush when Sam swats his arm. "Well, a) I wasn't memory-picking and b) even if I had been, I wouldn't have been doing it on purpose. Wouldn't have to, as loud as you think certain things."   
  
"What things?" Spike asks uncomfortably, receiving only an enigmatic head-tilt in response. He doesn't know whether to be horrified or embarrassed. Suspects he's managing a bit of both. "Damnit,  _what things_?"  
  
Sam shrugs, leans back and watches the night speed by at just under seventy. "During the exorcism--when we were in that  _Place_  . . . you let some things slip. Stuff about the Slayer you fought with, Buffy, and . . . um, Angel."  
  
Spike's mouth thins into a pale, uncharitable line. He knows this because he can see his own ghostly reflection in the windshield. "Again, I say: what stuff?"  
  
"I--" Sam sounds strangely subdued, all the sass and effrontery gone, leaving him once more tired and deflated. "Why didn't you tell me they were why you left the New Council?"  
  
"Well, it's not something I'd be inclined to bruit about, is it? A man's entitled to  _some_  privacy."   
  
"William--"  
  
"Two of the only three people I've ever loved got married to each other." Spike lays on a little more speed as the lights of their motel appear in the distance. "Got  _pregnant_ \--and got married, which is as it should be. And they didn't need me, hanging about like a fifth wheel. Or third wheel--whatever."  
  
Neither of them say anything more until Spike eases the Impala into the parking spot in front of their room. He stares at his hands, alternately fishbelly white and radioactive pink in the dim and flare of the motel 'vacancy' sign. Sam stares at--something that's not Spike, because the weight of his regard is absent.  
  
Finally, the passenger-side door opens and Sam unfolds his legs, levering himself out with a relieved groan that makes Spike wince, readjust the front seat and follows suit. He feels tired but wired, his mind sizzling along at superhuman speeds. The rest of him moves as slowly as a snail caught in a time-warp.  
  
He pockets the keys and pats the Impala lovingly, like he'd once patted the DeSoto: classic cars and brunets. His Achilles heels.  
  
"The only reason either of them ever let you go is because they didn't know what they had," Sam says softly, leaning against the car, his back to Spike, his broad shoulders stooped with exhaustion.  
  
"I'd say the reverse is true." Dry, prissy William-ish tone, mockney gutter-trash accent. It's harder to do than it used to be, suiting the demon ever so much more than it does the man. "They each knew exactly what they had, and ran for the hills."  
  
"That's not true." Sam is shaking his head, turning a frustrated, hang-dog look on Spike. "That's not true, but you won't see otherwise."  
  
"What's true is that there wasn't a place for me in London anymore. Nor Cleveland, really. Buggered if I'll ever go to Los Angeles again. No," Spike shakes his head. "My time with them--with the New Council--was over. They realized that, I realized that, and I did my best to move on." Spike finds a genuine smile rather easily. It's always easy to find smiles for Sam Winchester. "Went somewhere I could start over."  
  
"And then you met me." Sam sounds troubled, and Spike feels irrationally annoyed, wondering why the bloody hell  _Sam_  would feel troubled about Spike's rotten past.  
  
"Right. Then I met you." Spike turns on his heel, patting himself down for the motel key, licking his dry lips in anticipation of a much deserved nicotine fix. "The bloody pain in my arse who won't keep his long nose out of my skull."   
  
It comes out a lot less jokingly than Spike means it too. He can sense Sam wince and immediately feels guilty. Finds his key, then misses the lock three times. A perfect metaphor for his life. For all his lives.  
  
"I knew a broken heart when I saw one, I just--" crunch of crumbly-loose asphalt as Sam shuffles past the car. "I never knew who or what did the breaking."  
  
"Now you know." Spike chuckles ruefully. "Look, mate, everyone's had their heart broken at least once in their life."   
  
"More than once, for you, William. More than twice."  
  
Catharsis is a slippery slope, one Spike knows better than to step foot on, but, oh . . . Sam's voice is low, understanding, just right. Just right  _behind_  Spike who can't turn around, because if he did--if he  _did_ , the pain of not being kissed might shatter what's left of his reserve.  
  
 _God, I need a lie-down,_  he thinks, and it must be age setting in, because no innuendo accompanies this thought, just bone-deep weariness and longing for his own bed. Not even Sam's hands on his shoulders, heavy and steadying, change that, just make Spike feel tired and old.  
  
"You know--technically, I'm in my third life, so that makes me about par for the course." This comes out more flip and convincing than he expects. "Don't feel bad for  _me_." Spike turns the key and knob, stepping abruptly into the room and away from Sam's hands.  
  
Spare, but tasteful, their room is far better than either of them had a right to expect. Spike can only surmise that so few people stay out this way, the grime and despair that's a part of all motel rooms just hasn't had a chance to settle in here. The wood furniture has a few scratches, but no scars, no burns. The linen isn't faded, all surfaces are clean and shiny.   
  
The scent of cigarettes lingers in the air, but that's Spike's fault for chain-smoking half a nervous pack while Sam laid the gear out for the exorcism.  
  
The two beds, each large enough to sleep two intimates comfortably, haven't been slept in. One is covered in Sam's books and papers, the other has Spike's duffel tossed carelessly on the maple-colored duvet.  
  
There hasn't been anyone since that whole bizarre love-triangle. Which, toward the end, had been less a triangle and more a straight line between two points, neither of which was Spike.  
  
No one, since then. At first because his heart and body had felt like a wasteland, when they felt at all.   
  
But then came Sam, and. . . .  
  
No one, finally, because once given, William's heart--whether kept or cast aside--was a faithful one.   
  
"Uh, Will--"   
  
That surprised grunt and some dregs of a demon's instincts alert him to the fact that something's not right, and he turns—-  
  
\--just in time to catch Sam, as he sways forward, falling unconscious into the room and Spike's arms.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if Devil's Trap had ended differently? Written for the wonderful, the amazing, the tabaqui, one of my favoritest people in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own neither 'verse.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

"You alright now, mate?"   
  
Sam sits silently for long moments in the sturdy motel chair, head hanging, hands braced on his knees. Oblivious, it would seem, to Spike's helicopter act.   
  
It'd been all he could manage to get Sam to the chair. Long and lean the boy might be, but light?  
  
Not hardly.  
  
"Yeah, I'm fine, I--" Sam pushes himself up against Spike's huff of protest—ignores the supportive hand offered. His long legs carry him in a graceless stagger across the room, where he lands on the front edge of Spike's bed in a jerky flop. The duffle rolls to the floor noiselessly.  
  
The smile Sam turns on him is the one he usually has for Spike after a successful hunt: wan, but genuine. It makes Spike's heart take up residence in his throat and the bottom drop out of his stomach. "I'm fine, Will, just a little out of it. A hot shower and a cat nap, and I'm good as new."   
  
Spike lets his eyebrow comment on that statement, then adds: "After tonight, you should be more in need of a dirt nap, than a cat nap." There's William-ish clucking in his tone that only comes out where Sam is concerned.  
  
He leans on the locked door, for the moment too frazzled to do anything but just  _lean_ , and searches for  _it_. That hell's bells ringing in his nerve endings that makes them jitter and jangle and bounce.   
  
Almost two years as a human and the coming of daylight still sets off alarms in his body. He's spent countless sunny days--days that left him peeling like a burnt-red lizard--without worrying about more tangible things like melanoma, or looking like George Hamilton. But dawn, when he's awake for it, still fills him with low-grade terror.   
  
"On second though, I'm gonna need a solid eight hours just to make it to my feet again. First shower’s yours, if you want it," Sam is saying, still smiling up at Spike. He doesn't look as pale as he had at the cabin--or as pale as he had even five minutes ago.  
  
"Nah, that honor is yours, mate."  _If only so I can have a smoke and steel myself before you come strolling out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel._  "There's not many can do what you did and still be sane. Giving you first shower's my way of showing deference and respect."   
  
"Hmm." The sound is noncommittal, except for the amusement in it, and in Sam's exhaustion-reddened eyes. But that smile is still there, and still aimed at Spike.  
  
 _Bloody hell, maybe I_ should _take the first shower. A_ cold _one. Maybe he'll have fallen asleep before I get out--_  
  
"Okay, you aren't listening to a word I'm saying." That smile loses some of its weariness and Spike blushes when he realizes he's been staring fixedly at Sam's mouth.  
  
"Er--what was that?"  
  
A laugh now, raspy, and at least as mesmerizing as the mouth that emits it. "I would probably be dead or worse, if it wasn't for you. And I don't mean just tonight, Will.  _Spike_."  
  
"Not this again." Spike rolls his eyes and shoves away from the door a little, pausing when he realizes he has no direction. He debates the wisdom of maybe sitting next to, or across from Sam--of even crossing the room at all--then slumps back against the door with a dull thud, discretion being the better part of not making a complete prat of one's self.  
  
Sam's smile widens and Spike realizes he's been doing nothing but staring into Sam's eyes all this time.   
  
"Anyways. . . ." It's the kind of statement that demands a follow-through, but Spike hasn't got one. What he  _does_  got is half a pack of unsmoked Camels in his night table and nerves that could do with a bit of smoothing.   
  
He stalks over to the nighttable between their bed--with a half-hearted sneer for Sam as he brushes past--and fumbles the drawer open with shaking hands.   
  
Smokes in hand, he doesn't even bother with leaving the drawer open. The only place left for this pack when Spike's done is the trash.  
  
He can feel Sam's gaze on the back of his neck: a palpable heat that makes him break into a light sweat all over. Makes him hard, even though he half feels like crying.  
  
It'd been close, tonight. He honestly doesn't know whether to laugh or weep. He's suddenly in danger of doing both when Sam's large, gentle hands settle on his shoulders again.   
  
"Didn't you say you'd need eight hours just to shift your arse off the bed?" Spike asks, tapping out a coffin nail without upsetting the pleasant weight of Sam's hands.  
  
"What can I say? You inspire me to Herculean feats of standing." When Spike snorts, Sam chuckles, full of fond exasperation, like what you'd feel for a profligate relative. "What are we doing, Will?"  
  
"Dunno about you, but  _I'm_  doin' what I always do after an exorcism, mate: killing a pack of cigarettes, then tossing off in the shower,  _then_  sleeping like the bloody dead for fourteen hours." He means it to come out as a joke, but it falls flat even on his own ears.   
  
Just trying to keep the frustration and fatalism out of his tone doesn't leave much room for humor.  
  
"You're a creature of habit, I get that." Sam takes the pack from Spike, a lingering brush of warm fingers, and tosses it on the bed. Then those fingers are back on Spike's shoulders. "But this habit'll kill you."  
  
 _No, I rather think_ you'll _kill me._    
  
Sam gives efficient, bordering-on-painful neck and shoulder massages that nevertheless turn muscles Spike still doesn't have a name for into jello. Tonight is no exception. He groans happily and lights his cigarette without upsetting the massage. His old lighter--older than Sam is, older than Sam's parents probably--is long gone, like the duster, replaced by a series of Zippos and denim jackets, respectively. Disposably.  
  
"I thought you were gonna quit, Spike." From the first, Sam's always addressed him as Will, or William; rarely as Spike. There were times--still are--when Spike thinks he'll throttle the boy if he hears  _William_  one more time, in Sam's husky, mellow voice. . . .  
  
Now, Sam's making it torture to hear 'Spike', as well. But, conditioned as he is to respond a certain way to nicotine—bloody evil, bloody  _lovely_  nicotine—and neck rubs--bloody evil, bloody lovely neck rubs--Spike's nerves are flat-lining. When he laughs it sounds like a contented purr.  
  
"I'm a winner, baby, and winners  _never_  quit." That first inhale burns his lungs, burns away worries, and for a few moments, the yearning he's lived with for what feels like forever. "Bloody priceless."  
  
"Will--I'm so sorry," Sam says softly, with that disconcerting earnestness of his. He's close enough for Spike to feel each warm puff of breath, the faint radiation of body heat, the smell incense, sage, sweat . . . and very faintly of juniper.  
  
Dean.  
  
"What else is new?" Spike has no idea what Sam thinks he’s apologizing for this time, but it doesn’t matter. He can feel the guilt and dismay like it’s his own--and maybe it is, but real or imagined, he can’t stand the thought of Sam being upset. "You're always apologizing for some horrible thing that exists only in your mind. And you're always forgiven. Start taking it for granted that I'm a sucker for your lanky, Do-right brand of piety, Galahad."  
  
"I'm not pious. And stop calling me Galahad." Too clipped a tone to be teasing, and the massage falters, before going on a bit too briskly.  
  
 _Huh._  "Never bothered you be--ease up, mate, I'm not made of Play-Doh!--never bothered you before." The hands lighten up too much.  
  
Never any happy medium with a Winchester, Spike knows.   
  
"Yeah, well--" it's the kind of declaration that demands a follow-up, and Sam, of course, has one. "Maybe that's because I never realized how you meant it, before."  
  
Spike is certain he's missing something important, but totally  _un_ certain as to what it could possibly be. His brain's fried, and he can't quite keep up with whatever conversation Sam thinks they're actually having. "Oh? And how do I mean it, then?"  
  
"And don't do--that!"   
  
Too-brisk, too-light and back again before he can blink, and Spike's formerly happy muscles are strung up tight as a bow. "What?!"   
  
“You  _know_  what, Will.”  
  
“I hasten to remind you only one of us is a mind reader, Gal-- _Sam_ , and it’s sodding well not me.”  
  
They're both sound exasperated now, and small wonder. Spike takes a deep drag off his cancer-stick, not surprised that it doesn't resettle his nerves. He feels the warm gust of a sigh in his hair and knows Sam is taking a step back, changing his strategy.   
  
In a battle of snark and cynicism, a man of Sam’s earnestness would quickly find himself outmatched, and they both know it.  
  
"I’ve never been able to read you, Will. From the night we met, you’ve been a mystery to me." When Spike neither argues nor agrees, he finds himself turned to face Sam. This close, he has to strain the muscles Sam'd just re-stressed in order to see his face.   
  
Of course seeing Sam's face is always worth the a little neck-strain, but still.  _Ouch_.  
  
"Look, you’ve always called me Galahad.  _Is_  that how you see me? Like some kinda—inhumanly pious freak? Jesus, Will, were the demons  _right_?"  
  
Spike shakes his head, sighing smoke like a tired dragon. "Dunno what they told you, pet-- _Sam_. But you know better than to listen to anything that comes out of the mouth of a demon. It was trying to hurt you, and weaken your resolve with lies--"  
  
"Not about this." Sam's hands slide off Spike's shoulders and he shuffles toward the bathroom, only to stop halfway there, giving Spike that disappointed, hang-dog look. "It didn't have to lie because it knew the truth'd do a lot more damage."  
  
"What truth?" Spike asks--pleads. The overcast sky of Sam's eyes has turned leaden with the onset of a storm that Spike would stop, if Sam would only tell him what he's up against. "What did they tell you, Sam, and  _why are you believing it_?"  
  
"Because it's true,  _Spike_!" The distance in Sam's eyes and the way he says  _Spike_  feels like a blow, somehow. Or an accusation. "I don't have super-strength. I've never saved the world—not even  _once_ \--"  
  
"That you know of," Spike corrects softly. Sam rolls his eyes.  
  
"I've seen the turning of  _one_  century, and it's the only one I'll  _ever_  see. I can't rescue you from a life that's everything you hoped it wouldn't be--or change the world into a shining magical place for you."   
  
Struck speechless, all Spike can do is hiss and curse when the burnt-down cigarette singes his fingertips. He absently grounds it out on the nighttable without looking away from Sam--  
  
Sam, who's approaching him once again, all traces of exhaustion and soreness replaced by a fractious second wind.  
  
"The only life I can offer you is the one we've already got," he says, stopping suddenly a foot away from Spike. The wall in his eyes has crumbled, given way to some emotion, raw and too powerful to be kept back. "A brutal, probably short life, in a world that's as indifferent to your suffering as it is to everyone else's. That's  _all_  I have to give you, Will."  
  
Though he wants more than anything to touch Sam, hug him--kiss away the insidious notions that'd been planted in his head--Spike holds himself very still.   
  
"When have I ever asked for more than this life, or this world?" He asks carefully, afraid any sudden misstep might scare Sam off. Figuratively speaking.   
  
Figuratively speaking, he’s also afraid he’s wishfully hearing everything he’s been longing to hear under Sam’s words, and so misunderstanding the direction of this conversation completely.  
  
"You may not ask, but once upon a time, you had. . . ." Sam laughs sadly, running his hands through his hair. "Fuck, Will, we just helped a man exorcise almost twenty demons from himself--then watched him  _re-swallow_  them. A man you keep referring to as 'the ordinary one'. He holds fucking  _demons_  inside himself like a giant mason-jar, without letting them corrupt or subvert him, and he's _ordinary_  compared to the kind of people you're used to! How the hell can I compete with him? With any of them? I've never even--"   
  
"Sam!" Spike snaps, finally moving to grab Sam's arms and pull him close. He's not only tired, he's reaching the end of his energy. Maintaining Sam's level of angst after an exorcism is a game best left to younger men.   
  
But yes, things are clicking, falling into place for him, making him feel a right git for not seeing them sooner.   
  
"Sam . . . I've never met anyone with your determination, your--purpose, your  _faith_  that there's a plan and a reason behind everything. Armed with that faith--and often little else--you walk knowingly into darkness that'd have most men weeping like infants."  
  
Spike turns his death-grip on Sam's arms into a gentler hold, with hints of stroke.   
  
"You walk through darkness, and still shine like the sun. You do impossible, impossibly good things on an almost nightly basis, and you think anyone compares to you? That  _anyone_  could compete with you?   
  
"You think I call you Galahad with anything other than love and respect?"  
  
Sam's reddened eyes widen at  _love_ , at that one tug closer that puts him undeniably in Spike’s personal space.   
  
If there's aught else in his eyes beyond surprise--Spike can't read it. Is relieved that he can't, and that relief makes him brave enough to go on. To have this out before reason puts the reins back on his heart.   
  
"You are the best man I have ever known, Sam Winchester. And I've been neither poet enough, nor man enough to tell you this before now, but--I love you."   
  
More silence; damned uncomfortable, fragile silence that Spike can't break without cutting himself to ribbons on the shards. But Sam finally breaks it, with quiet bravery that makes Spike's heart feel over-full.  
  
"You love me?" He asks, searching Spike's eyes for a truth that's been hidden in plain sight. Of course Spike has to blink and look away. He's been the focus of that laser-beam curiosity countless times, but never quite this intensely.  
  
He has to find words--any words at all would make him feel less naked than he does at this moment.  
  
 _How now, wit! Whither wander you?_  Spike cudgels both brain and heart for a response less flat-footed than 'yuh-huh'. But the moment for confessing this feeling isn't now--is maybe never, and no words, however pretty, can redeem a declaration of love if it's unrequited.  
  
"I  _adore_  you. And not in that poncy  _Beaches_ -way, either. Well, not  _just_ ," he amends. The  _Beaches_ -love is the only thing that's kept Spike from drowning in the other, less safe feelings.  
  
He looks into Sam's surprised eyes and doesn't drown . . . but he does wet his toes, and tell himself he sees something registering there besides shock.   
  
Tells himself that surely, there's no better time to declare one's undying love than after an exorcism. After the object of said love has just been reunited with the older brother he had more than brotherly feelings for.  
  
"I--I didn't know," Sam says unnecessarily, blushing and blinking. Spike is encouraged by the fact that he doesn't pull away, even as he's worried that Sam doesn't seem inclined to move closer. "I had no idea you felt--that it was  _love_."  
  
While that’s not pity, or nor disgust, neither is it whole-hearted reciprosity, or even tentative uncertainty. Just blank, gobsmacked shock, and buggering  _hell_ , does Spike need a less subtle sign that he’s barking up the wrong tree?  
  
He scoffs, ready to sweep it all under the carpet, snark it all into the background. Wouldn't be the first time . . . might just be the hardest, though. "Yeah, well. Not like I’ve been bothering to hide it. And you’ve the cheek to call yourself a bloody psych--"  
  
Sam shuts Spike up by the simple expedient of hauling him close by a threadbare denim lapel and kissing him.  
  



	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if Devil's Trap had ended differently? Written for the wonderful, the amazing, the tabaqui, one of my favoritest people in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own neither 'verse.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

Kissing?  
  
Devouring is more like it, but sweetly, one hand wound in Spike's jacket and shirt, the other cupping his face gently.  
  
One of them--Spike's never sure which one, later--moves them toward his bed, until the backs of Spike's knees hit and he topples, Sam landing solidly on top of him—knocking the wind out of him. But Spike wouldn't stop this kiss for something as paltry and prosaic as oxygen.   
  
Especially when Sam's kiss, instead of slowing and easing, grows hungrier and more possessive with every second. At least till he stops and sits up--   
  
\--grinning like a madman as he straddles Spike's thighs. His long, nimble pianist's fingers are precise even in his haste as he undoes Spike's button-fly 501s. Then Sam's staring at Spike as if flummoxed by the complete lack of underwear. After a few moments, the stare turns into a laugh, Sam throwing his head back.   
  
"You're doin' wonders for the old ego, pet," Spike grumbles, skinning his sprayed-on jeans down to his knees with a shimmy and kicking them off before fumbling with Sam's zipper.   
  
Unlike Spike, Sam's wearing underwear—blue boxers with a sizeable wet spot and an even more sizeable tent. "Do I get to laugh at you, now?"  
  
"Don't . . . you'll give me a complex," Sam warns, his eyes still dancing with laughter, only to flutter shut when Spike eases down the boxers.  
  
"Got nothin' to worry about from where I'm sitting." Spike runs his finger up Sam's length just for the shiver he knows it'll get him. He's not disappointed. The look that’s replaced the grin is one of pure wonder.   
  
“Right. Those need to come off,  _now_.” Spike pulls Sam down to the bed. Before the surprise wears off, Spike’s scrambling off the bed, taking half Sam's clothing with him.   
  
“Isn’t that much better?” Grinning as he tosses jeans and boxers over his shoulder.  
  
“Uh, yeah, but--” Sam begins to say, laughter still in his voice as he sits up on his elbows to look at Spike. “Now, you’re way too far away.”  
  
Spike smiles a little and sits on the bed. Slides his finger down Sam’s cock again just for the shiver, the flutter of his eyes as Sam’s head falls back. Encouraged, he follows up with his tongue before closing his mouth around the tip.  
  
"God, Will," Sam moans, his hand running through Spike's hair, obviously wanting to grip and guide, to thrust up in to Spike's mouth. But he doesn't; just holds himself as still as Spike had a few minutes ago, lets Spike taste--even Sam’s  _taste_  is sage and smoke, as if incense is a part of his being--and explore and tease.  
  
 _Has he ever been with another man?_  Spike wonders, experiencing a moment of hesitation. But a very brief one, since now's certainly not the time to ask such a question.  _If he has, then I have to make him forget some random other bloke. But if he hasn't . . . I just have to make him forget his no doubt vivid fantasies about Dean. No pressure at all._  
  
It's been almost three years since he's done this--the beginnings of neck- and jaw-ache must come with the just-human territory--with a man. Though technically, Angel hadn't been a man. Neither of them had been . . . at least not  _then_.  
  
Cool muscles, cool control, cool heart—-Angel's blood hadn't run at all, let alone as hot as Spike’s seems to now.  
  
(In the end it had, of course, run plenty hot. Just not for Spike.)  
  
A split second later, Spike's mere humanity is once again driven home to him when he tries to deep-throat Sam--something he's done a thousand times before, mostly with Angelus's ham-fist wound in his hair and yanking for all he's worth--and starts gagging.  
  
“Jesus—Will—“  
  
The only good thing is he doesn't actually throw up, just coughs and chokes till he turns fire-engine red and flops back on the bed. Sam rubs his chest gently, soothing circles into his skin.   
  
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he promises. “I didn’t mean to--“  
  
“Wasn’t you,” Spike snaps. Swallows around the ache in his throat to admit: “It was me, not you. I'm a bit out of practice, I suppose.”  
  
And he can't look up, doesn't want to see contempt or pity in the eyes of someone whose opinion means everything to him. All he can do is hold still and hope the merciful Earth opens up to swallow him whole.   
  
Had already done once before, so the odds are certainly in his favor.   
  
Sadly, the Earth doesn’t open up to swallow him, but an old memory does. One of the oldest he has of life after he was turned:  
  
 _"Silly English prig." Angelus had said that first time, shoving William away from him, almost fondly. In his manner and on that damned angel's face is the feigned and overdone sympathy that somehow hurts more than contempt.  
  
Then the false compassion disappears, is overcome by a smirk and a laugh, as light-hearted a laugh as so heartless a bastard can give. Without even bothering to button his trousers or tuck himself away, Angelus strides out of the library--where William _had_  been composing a sonnet about his Sire’s sable-dark hair--toward the drawing room, and Drusilla.   
  
"Mad though she is, one thing my Dru knows is how to please her Master. You ought to have her teach you, William," he tosses over his shoulders, a parting shot like acid dashed into William’s face.  
  
And William can only sit there, his cheeks burning cold and pale with embarrassment, till Drusilla's delighted laugh drifts in from the salon.  
  
The worst thing of all is that he _does _have Drusilla teach him, just so next time he can wipe that smugly pitying look off Angelus's face--_  
  
"Hey?"   
  
Still embarrassed but suddenly,  _thankfully_  grounded in the present, Spike wipes his mouth and opens his eyes. Sees in Sam's blue-grey eyes something he'd never seen in Angelus's cold dark ones.  
  
Concern, pure and simple.  
  
"Where'd you go?" Sam asks softly, and the crazy-huge  _love_  that always seems to be either a lump in Spike's throat or a knot in his stomach turns into a warm wave of amazement. The part of Spike--the large part that is still and will always be  _William_  deifies Sam in that moment, forever limning him in golden light.  
  
"Someplace I shall never visit again, upon this you may rely," William commandeers Spike’s voice to promise for the both of them.  
  
"Good." Sam says like he means it. He kneels between Spike's legs and leans down for a kiss that erases angsty thoughts about pitiful Victorian-era ponces, leaving Spike thrusting up into the air between their bodies--desperate for contact until Sam settles gingerly on top of him. "Very, very good. Welcome back."  
  
Spike wraps his arms around Sam and holds him closer, till he can barely breathe, either from the kiss, Sam’s weight or both. It’s as if they've been kissing for years, but haven't seen each other in long, desperate months.   
  
He gives himself over to his desire, ready now to drown in it wholly, even as he mumbles something into the kiss and during pauses which he should be using to breathe.  
  
Though what words could possibly take precedence over Sam's mouth, or the slippery-blunt glide-push of Sam's cock against his own, Spike can’t imagine.  
  
It's only when Sam's kisses move earward, neckward, latch onto a collarbone where they prickle and bite, that Spike realizes he's been saying, "I love you, I love you, I love you, Sam. . . ."  
  
Over and over again.   
  
For once, William’s annoying verbosity would be a godsend, rather than such flat-footed mumblings--which surely lose meaning with each inane repetition.  
  
Then Sam's cock pushes lower and further back to nudge at Spike's perineum, drawing a gasp and cry from Spike that turns into Sam's name as he comes, instinctually baring his throat.  
  
And he knows Sam is whispering something in his ear--something sweet and reassuring that Spike knows he won’t remember a damn word of, and that’s the  _last_  thing he knows for a brief, golden eternity.  
  
Conscious thought filters back in: the sweaty cling of his t-shirt, the slightly abrasive feel of the comforter on bare skin, Sam's damp face pressed into his throat.   
  
The feel of tense, twitching muscles under Spike's hand--the hot, heavy feel of Sam's cock on his stomach as he tries not to come.  
  
Well, that won't do at all.  
  
"If I was still a vampire, this would’ve gone differently,” Spike says nostalgically, only to feel Sam tense even more and start to pull away. But it's too late for that. Now that Spike's had a taste, he's holding on till his arms fall off.   
  
So he hugs Sam as tightly as his weak, human limbs allow. " _If_  I was still a vampire, I wouldn't need lube to have you inside me, pet. I’d have made it so good for you . . . you'd be fucking me right now, hard and burning, pounding me into this mattress, and--“  
  
“Oh,  _fuck_ \--“ Sam thrusts hard against Spike twice, three times--despite Spike’s all too human state--pounding him into the mattress, then pinning him there. "Oh--"  
  
Every muscle in Sam's body suddenly relaxes as he adds to the wet-and-stickiness between them, shaking and panting, his face buried in Spike’s neck.  
  
 _Still got it,_  Spike thinks with something like smug, something like wonder, carding through Sam's damp hair with tingly-numb fingers.  
  
 _"Oh let my looks be then the eloquence and dumb presagers of my speaking breast, who pleads for love, and look for recompense. More than that tongue that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ--to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine writ."_  
  
He mouths this into the warm plaid half hanging off Sam’s shoulder. Repeats it five time, before Sam pulls himself together enough to speak.   
  
"Christ," he breathes, humid heavy exhalations with flickers of tongue against Spike’s ear.  
  
When he sits up just enough to look Spike in the eyes, whatever he sees there makes him smile . . . sharp and satisfied, like a reynard. He moves in for a slow, thorough tongue-fucking that would go on forever, if Spike had his way.  
  
"God, you look sullied," Sam murmurs on his lips. "Angelic and sullied."  
  
"Mm . . . and 'm cherry, too." The interested twitch of Sam's cock and the resulting shiver makes Spike grin. He slides his hands down to Sam's arse for a squeeze, before rucking up the damp plaid shirt to stroke his back.   
  
  
"Cherry? You mean--you haven't--" Sam looks pole-axed when Spike shakes his head no. " _No one_  since the shanshu?"  
  
Spike shrugs, tries not to blush. Tries. "Not many people get a second chance at a first time. Wanted to wait for someone who. . . ."  
  
"Someone who--?" That laser-beam focus is on Spike again, making his body temperature climb at least ten degrees.   
  
"For someone who counted. For someone I love, who's finally opened his eyes and  _seen_  me, and might someday return my feelings." A wry smile, that's belied by the blush springing to Spike's cheeks. "Was beginning to think I'd die a virgin."  
  
"I've  _always_  seen you, Spike. I've seen you from the moment I first saw you." Sam pauses to examine that statement then shakes his head. "Yeah. I just didn't-- _couldn't_ \--"  
  
Before Sam rolls off him, Spike catches a familiar, preoccupied and guilty look on his face.   
  
What on Earth could Sam Winchester have to feel guilty about? What could preoccupy him so completely after what just happened?  
  
Like a bell tolling some dreadful hour, underneath the scents of sex and sage and  _Sam_  is the faintest hint of juniper and whiskey.  
  
 _What, indeed?_  Spike thinks, and tries to bolster himself for the shit-storm that may be about to occur. No use starting a--whatever they're starting--with secrets and shame between them.  
  
"You're forgiven, Sam. Understand?" Spike sits up and tilts Sam's face till their eyes meet. "Whatever you've done--or regret not doing . . . you're forgiven."  
  
"I--I--" Sam closes his eyes, obviously trying to collect himself and just as obviously failing. "I never meant for it to happen--Dean never did anything to encourage it, I just started  _feeling_  things. And I'm pretty sure he has no idea how I feel-- _felt_ —"  
  
"How you  _feel_. And I don't think he does," Spike lies, this time choosing  _not_  to disabuse Sam of a comforting notion. Instead, he lets his hand drift down to Sam's chest. Their hearts keep the same time. "Ex-vampire, pet. Incest? Not exactly a pet peeve of mine--"  
  
"No." When Sam's eyes open there are walls behind them where before, there'd been none. He pushes Spike's hand away, and looks up at the ceiling, his eyes and mouth narrowed with anger, shame, and a dozen other emotions Spike can't read. "It never went that far, so don't use that word. Just-- _don't_."  
  
That stops Spike, who'd been reaching out again to comfort and calm, in his tracks.   
  
"Alright." And it is, so help him. Sam'll have to do a lot worse than have a post-fuck freakout to be beyond Spike's patience or forgiveness.   
  
He runs his hands over his hair, smoothing the gelled, hedgehog tufts of blond and light brown, then eases off the bed. Understands that this time, he can hold Sam up, instead of the other way around.  
  
If doing that means giving Sam time to himself, time to process--then that's what Spike'll do.  
  
And he'll do it without letting on that it hurts.  
  
"Maybe I will take that first shower, eh? Wouldn't say no to company, though," he adds softly. Sam makes a sound that's too rueful to be a laugh and continues staring up at the ceiling.   
  
After nearly a minute of willing Sam to say or do something that isn't ignoring him, Spike slinks off to the bathroom. There's nothing for it but to leave well enough alone and let Sam sort himself out.  
  
But that blank silence dogs Spike's every step.  
  


*

  
  
The hot water feels like penance and a benediction on his sore muscles.   
  
Unfortunately, it'll take more than that to be clean of tonight's work, of hosts of buried secrets come to the light like bodies surfacing in a swamp.   
  
Spike sighs, fighting off a case of the shakes. He tries to concentrate on washing, on the water, on muscles that scream like wounded animals under the delicious heat . . . on anything that isn't remembering the way Sam felt against him, or imagining the way Sam would feel in him.  
  
Strangely enough, this isn't hard to accomplish. His mind, in a freakish display of cross-association, takes him back to earlier that night.  
  
 _"Hey."  
  
Spike looks down from his perch on the Impala's trunk. Watches Dean approach impassively.   
  
"Hey, y’self."  
  
Dean walks around the Impala a few times, his broken boots--not so different from Spike's--kicking up little puffs of gravel dust. Finally he stops in front of Spike, grudging respect on his face. "You took good care of my baby."  
  
Choosing not to read more into that statement than the obvious, Spike pats the Impala gently, lovingly. "Had a baby myself, once. A ’59 DeSoto Sportsman."  
  
Dean whistles. "What happened to her?"  
  
"Sunnydale." Spike shrugs and Dean nods, seeming to understand. Of course he understands. Hunters, for the most part, may have steered clear of Slayer territory, but that doesn't mean they didn't know. "How're things inside?"  
  
"Oh, swell." Sarcasm as sharp as the fleeting, predatory girn. "He won't say a word to me, doesn't want me to _look _at him, let alone touch him . . . but I guess after what happened, he kinda needs some time, some space. . . ."  
  
"'S the last thing he needs right now," Spike snorts, eyeing Dean disbelievingly. "His whole bloody problem was too much space. Inner space."  
  
Dean is shaking his head like Spike is slow--a charming, condescending smile is already curving his lips, despite the angry frustration in his eyes. "You don't understand. Xand doesn't want—"  
  
"_Xand _doesn't know his arsehole from a hole in the ground, just now. So fuck what he wants. Give him what he needs."  
  
Dean crosses his arms slowly. That smile turns into something smirk-like and much less attractive. "Well, now, since you've seen _every _facet of our relationship, what do_ you _think he needs if not space, Dr. Phil?"  
  
Spike sighs, hops off the Impala. He's now two inches shorter than Dean, and obviously pounding his head against a brick wall. Dean Winchester's the type to do what he wants, when he wants, and not a damn sight more, or sooner.  
  
But never let it be said that Spike didn't give it the old Exeter try.  
  
He looks up into those pale, shuttered eyes and plants his feet, settling in for a good old-fashioned stare down. Dean doesn't break gazes, but that stony, willful stare cracks a little, softens. He stops being the legend Sam's memory and Spike's jealousy built him up to and becomes a flesh-and-blood man. One who’s scared of losing someone he loves, yet again, to circumstances he can’t control.  
  
"What does he need? I'll do anything," Dean says, as if he's afraid the answer will be _nothing it's in your power to give _.  
  
They’ll never be best friends, no, but love’s bitches can always smell their own. That has to count for something, as far as Spike's concerned.  
  
He steps closer to Dean, invades his personal space. Dean doesn't take a step back and Spike doesn't want or expect him too. “Needs you to get up in his face and prove you're not gonna run off screaming, now that you've had a glimpse of the dark places inside him."   
  
There's a flicker of understanding in Dean's eyes, and Spike knows he's gotten through, though the evidence is quickly covered by that ridiculous cowboy charm.   
  
But, mission accomplished and Hallmark moment ended, Spike's already shouldering past Dean and back toward the cabin. “Anyways, reckon it’s about time Sam and I were heading back toward town. Been a long night, what with de-possessing your boyfriend--“  
  
"Maybe you should take your own advice, Johnny Rotten."  
  
Spike stops in his tracks, biting his lip and wishing for a cigarette.  
  
"What the bloody hell does that mean?" He asks, so low the words are almost lost, even in this noiseless, empty night.  
  
"It means--" Spike doesn’t turn as Dean crunches up closer, drawing even. "I know what you’re thinkin’, and no. You ain't good enough for my little brother, but you know what?" Too-shrewd glance that's more self-mocking than anything else. "No one's good enough for Sammy. Never will be."  
  
"Including you?"  
  
"_Especially _me, Sid Vicious," Dean agrees chummily, but there’s a hint of steel in his voice and Spike knows that beyond this point, this particular subject is off limits. But he's as much as gotten the go-ahead--a promise of non-interference from the brother whose opinion could make or break Spike’s chances.  
  
Ah, but the timing of it is utter shite.  
  
"I know the timing is kinda shit," Dean goes on, almost apologetically, and Spike wonders if Sam's psychic twinkle is a genetic trait. "But timing is for Stephen King novels and John Hughes movies. Just tell him how you feel. And be good to him, or they'll never find your body."  
  
"Ditto, Kansas." Dean's eyes narrow, and Spike shrugs. "Your boy and I were never best mates, but I know a witch lives in Brazil who could say otherwise. She’d turn you into a toad then beat you to death with a shovel if you gave her cause."  
  
Dean smirks again.  
  
_We understand each other perfectly, _that smirk says. Sketching a sardonic salute, He heads back into the cabin and Spike sits on the steps to wait for the one Winchester he can actually tolerate for more than five minutes.  
  
Sam comes outside a few minutes later looking exhausted and shaken, and droops onto the step next to Spike.  
  
"How is he?"   
  
Sam sighs. "Not great. But better, now that Dean stopped wimping out."  
  
"Shouldn't be so hard on your brother, mate. Not easy to see that kinda thing happen to someone you love. He feels a tad overwhelmed, right about now. I can’t say I blame him."  
  
“Yeah. . . .” Sam sighs and leans back against the steps. “They’re in there bitching and sniping at each other, but . . . his eyes are all lit up like Christmas.”  
  
“Your brother’s, or Harris’s?”  
  
“Both,” Sam admits after a long moment. Spike can hear the frown in his voice. “Dean’s acting like a mother-hen and Xander’s complaining about it, and pretending he’s not basking in the attention.”  
  
Spike grunts up at the starry night. "Such a bloody mess. The other Scoobies'd have a collective embolism, if they could see him now. If they knew their white knight’d been well and truly greyed. . . ."  
  
That gets a questioning glance from Sam. "Are you gonna tell them?"  
  
"Fuck, no. Not m’ place." Spike stands up, tired as hell and offers Sam his hand. He's eager to be gone from this cabin, this state--this part of the country. He misses their place, the small bands of hunters they sometimes work with all up and down the eastern seaboard, including a few Slayers and witches that've somehow slipped the New Council's all-seeing radar.  
  
He misses their routine, their _normal _life.  
  
He's eager to get Sam the hell away from Dean, if only for now.  
  
"Figure we'll hang around a few days, make sure they're gonna be okay,’ Sam says, taking Spike's hand and letting himself be pulled up. When Spike keeps him from over-balancing them both, Sam doesn't seem anxious to be let go of, looking into Spike's eyes for longer than is strictly necessary. Or at least it seems that way.  
  
Then Sam blinks and looks away. "Dean, uh, says he'll give us a call if they're up for visitors later today."   
  
"Oh. Good." Like magic Dean's name breaks the spell and Spike's steadying Sam efficiently, before letting him go. "Well, best hurry back to the room and get us some sleep, eh?"  
  
Then he's walking back to the Impala without waiting for an answer._  
  
Spike leans his head on the warm, wet tile and laughs till it echoes around the shower stall.  
  
Dean Winchester is probably full of shit when it comes to a lot of things, but never more so than about the importance of proper timing.  
  
Not that Spike'll tell him so. He's of a mind that Dean goaded him into spilling his guts at exactly the wrong time to this precise end.  
  
As in,  _the end of any chance I might've had with Sam._  
  
"Bloody hell--melodrama doesn't suit a man of your age, William," Spike tells himself. "All he needs is time, and you not acting like a big girl's blouse."  
  
But a quiet inner-voice that’s more  _William_  than Spike has been in over a century whispers that, if worse came to worst, Sam would probably not forsake their friendship.  
  
Probably.  
  
That voice has never been much of a comfort.  
  
He doesn't realize he's clinging to the tile and shaking until strong arms wrap around him, pull him against a long, tall,  _hard_  body.  
  
"I was a jerk, and I'm sorry," Sam whispers over the patter of hot water, his lips feathering against Spike's earlobe and cheek. "I've been hiding my feelings for so long I guess I didn't take it well that someone finally  _knew_.  
  
"Why aren't you disgusted? Why aren't you running away?"  
  
Turning to face Sam is no easy task, as tight as Sam's holding him--as narrow as the damn stall is--but Spike perseveres. Blue-grey eyes behind a curtain of hair and wet meet his own warily. "It'll take more than a love that dare not speak its name, and a little freakout with a side of cold shoulder to send me running. Like I said, former vampire, pet. Very little shocks or disgusts me. Nothing about you even comes  _close_. Nothing about you ever could."  
  
A wry, but still-fragile smile.  
  
"What  _would_  it take to send you running?"   
  
"Trying to suck the world into Hell just might do it," Spike says thoughtfully. "Though I'm not one hundred percent on that."  
  
Sam's still chuckling when Spike kisses him, but the kiss is returned with equal desperation, till Spike's just holding on, his lips pressed against the spot he'd have put his claim mark, not so long ago.  
  
"It'll be okay," Sam promises over the syncopated patter of water. He rains uncoordinated kisses on Spike's forehead, on his nose, even on his mouth once.   
  
Then again, soft and hungry, zeroing in now that he’s got the right target.   
  
And in between the kisses, there are reassurances from both of them:  
  
"I never meant to hurt you--"  
  
" _I_  never meant to hurt  _you_ \--"  
  
"I'll do better from now on--won't push you away--"  
  
"--a man needs his privacy, I shouldn't have pushed--"  
  
"--you were just trying to help, I shouldn't have. . . ."   
  
". . .  _I_  shouldn't have. . . ."  
  
Nothing but the sound of water falling.   
  
"Jesus . . . you're beautiful, William."   
  
"I love you."  
  
"I--" Sam flounders, glancing away from Spike. Oddly enough, the look of distress on his face hurts Spike more than the fact that Sam doesn't love him back.  
  
 _Yet,_  the William-voice whispers in an unusual display of optimism.   
  
He waits for Sam to look at him again--brushes dark, too long hair out of Sam’s eyes. "If and when, right, pet?  
  
Sam shakes his head almost angrily. "No  _if_  about it, just when. That's a promise."  
  
Spike smiles, ‘cause it's always easy to find a smile for Sam Winchester. "No . . . no promises, love. Just kiss me, try not to worry about it, yeah?"  
  
That Winchester scowl of determination says that Sam's going to worry whether Spike likes it or not, but he finally nods. "Yeah."   
  
Then he kisses Spike, and doesn't stop till long after the water runs cold. 


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own neither 'verse.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

It's the kind of sterile, glittering, monochromatic landscape one only sees in Eighties-style post-apocalyptic films, and Xander isn't in an appreciative mood.   
  
  
  
"Remember the Eighties?" He asks no one at all, jamming his fists into his pockets, hunching his shoulders and beginning the long trek across the windswept plain.   
  
  
  
Not that walking is a necessity. Not in this Place. Like the Agents in  _The Matrix_ , the demon is everywhere and nowhere, and breathing has nothing to do with Xander's lungs.  
  
  
  
The wind feels real enough, though. Dry, chill and annoying, cutting through the corduroy jacket like it isn't even there.   
  
  
  
 _Which it's not,_  Xander thinks ruefully, bowing his head so the coarse grit flies past his nose, not up it. He could quell the wind and cold with his will, but it's what the demon wants, and rule numero uno in dealing with demons is to never,  _ever_  give them what they want.   
  
  
It’s like giving them an in.  
  
  
Time served in the Basement of Doom with an undead roomie had done more to teach him that than anything else.   
  
  
  
And though the difference between a vampire and the thing Xander's hunting is. . . whole universes, he has a feeling he'll need all the will he can stockpile for this particular fight. Isn't prepared to waste even the microscopic amount of will it takes to propel himself across the Other Plane in pursuit of something that isn't running from him.   
  
  
  
Is, in  _Matrix_ -like style, everywhere.   
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
Time flies funny in a no-Place like the Other Place. Trudging across shifting sands and eventually crumbly hardpan gives Xander plenty of time to think while his sixth sense roams 360 degrees for "millions" of "miles".   
  
  
  
He scans the world-that-is-not, which surrounds him. Under the demon's glamour--its denizens are unseen, though Xander can feel them, the whisper-soft brush of thoughts, greetings. . . the ebb-flow of emotions, some sweet as candy, others as foul as a jar full of rotten eggs.   
  
  
  
Normally, Xander would've come across any of a thousand different beings during his ascension. Visitors, like himself--travelers on missions, beings who are lost--in the damned and / or wandering sense.   
  
  
  
Some very few are like Xander, himself: beings pursuing other beings out of the corporeal worlds and into this one.  
  
  
  
By these, he is usually greeted warily, but civilly enough, when he's greeted at all. As with earth-bound hunters, news and information are exchanged--only here, it’s sorted, then discarded or kept at speeds that'd make NASA's best computers look like a badly rigged Tandy.   
  
  
  
There are dozens of thousands of other beings to see and avoid here, normally. The only others that ever show an interest in Xander are the Twinklers, and they'll investigate anything not moving fast enough to evade them.   
  
  
Xander's witnessed Twinklers--if any form can be ascribed to them, it's spiky balls of pale-gold, fuzzy light--dip into beings that devour energy of any kind like the astral equivalent of black holes . . . only to come bounding playfully out of them like kittens, broadcasting nothing more intense than limitless wonder.   
  
  
  
Practically interchangeable, there could be millions of them, or only a few. If anything here knows or cares, it's not telling.   
  
  
  
But none of these or any others appear to be present, thanks to the glamour of unending wilderness he's let the demon cast over him.  
  
  


*

  
  
  
The  _Beyond Thunderdome_ -after-midnight landscape is tiresome, neverending, even in a Place where all places are  **here** , all times are  **now** , and  _end_  has as little relevancy as  _beginning_.   
  
  
  
But Xander walks.   
  
  
  
As he learned in Monopoly, the quickest way to win is to let the other guy play by his own rules . . . at least at first.   
  
  
  
So it's years of walking . . . till Xander's clothes have crumbled into dust, till his hair has grown long, grown grey, and fallen out. Till Xander himself is nothing more than a collection of star-bleached bones doggedly trekking under the naked sky.   
  
  
Stranger stars, even more indifferent than the ones he knows, whirl above his head, more densely packed than any stars on an outer spiral of the Milky Way galaxy should be.   
  
  
  
"You've  _gotta_  be tired, Xand-man," a familiar voice observes. A long, wiry arm is slung around Xander's hunched, skeletal shoulders.   
  
  
  
It's the first salvo in a battle that--okay, Xander should've known would get dirty. But demons always fight a lot dirtier than expected, don't they?   
  
  
  
Another valuable life-lesson picked up in the Basement of Doom.   
  
  
  
In the real world, the  _corporeal_  world, Jesse's an ache that never quite goes away, like the nagging twinge of a phantom limb . . . something Xander knows about all too well.   
  
  
  
In a place where time going in either direction means nothing, Jesse's the first big heartbreak of his life, happening all over again: technicolor-gold eyes and corpse-pale skin . . . dust that coats his hands guilty grey, instead of red.   
  
  
  
Xander staggers, stumbles, only to be caught and held up by hands that shouldn't feel warm in this place and without his skin and nerve endings.   
  
  
  
No, the warmth is just another glamour perpetuated by the demon--by them both, in this case. They both know it wouldn't be Jesse without the warmth.   
  
  
  
"Look at you--you can barely put one foot in front of the other. And speaking of, bro, you look  _awful_."   
  
  
  
So divinely tactless, so divinely teenaged.  
  
  
  
"And you look. . . ." Xander turns to look at the demon wearing Jesse's face. Wearing it perfectly, down to the degree of lopsided in the huge grin.   
  
  
  
He sighs, though the lack of flesh and lungs just makes it sound like bones rattling in a high wind.   
  
  
  
"You look good, Jess."   
  
  
  
The Jesse-demon preens in that self-mocking way Jesse'd taken every compliment. "I try."   
  
  
  
"It's been a long time."   
  
  
  
"Twelve years," Jesse-demon nods, suddenly solemn, his eyes ticking grimly over Xander's skeleton, a slight frown creasing the worry-spot between his eyebrows. "No offense, but time has  _not_  been kind to you. You're all skin and--okay, you're actually just bones, man.”   
  
  
  
"Don't let the outside fool you. I feel pretty good--like I'm getting my second wind."   
  
  
  
"Says the man with no respiratory system." The Jesse-demon snorts and laughs. The sound is bright, but empty, ringing hollowly off the sky to echo as pointlessly as the wind.  
  
  
The Jesse-demon hauls Xander's bones to it by his right and left humerus. Its golden-brown eyes are searching Xander's with suspicious sincerity.   
  
  
  
"I never said--never got a chance to tell you I'm sorry about—" a grimace so perfectly chagrined, the pain of losing Jesse, though still a million miles distant, comes closer. "I'm sorry about the  _grrr_  at The Bronze, and trying to kill you. I let the Master and Darla and Luke convince me that everything was different--that  _I_  was different, and that you and Wills were nothing but shadows connected to the person I used to be. But they were wrong.  _I_  was wrong, and--I'm so sorry. It was a moment of extreme jerkdom."   
  
  
  
"Which made that moment different from all your other moments--how, exactly?" The quip is out before Xander can stop it, not that he would've. As it is, he's playing right into the demon's hands. With a little effort, it'll play right into his.   
  
  
  
Meanwhile, the Jesse-demon is laughing again, loud and long. The stars above dim and flicker, momentarily.  
  
  
  
"God, I've missed you so much, Xand," the Jesse-demon says, ducking its head in that aw-shucks way. (From its grin, a perfect distribution of sharps and flats, Xander receives a revelation about why Cordelia's and Anya’s smiles--the big, movie-star ones--had never failed to stop him in his tracks.) "Could I--I mean, can I hug you?"   
  
  
  
Xander could tell it to drop the act. That they both know what it is, that it's only here for one reason. But this is all part of the dance. Letting it think it's stolen enough of his weaknesses that it has the upper hand. It takes all of Xander's stockpiled will to hold himself in, hold the illusion of what the demon wants and expects.   
  
  
  
He takes a step closer, tears that he doesn't have to fake running from eyes he no longer has.   
  
  
  
A flash of those perfect teeth and he's in the Jesse-demon's arms. There's none of that pounding-on-the-back-and-no-contact-below-the-sternum macho bullshit. This is a  _hug_ , warmed by a demon's will, redolent of Big Red chewing gum and burning, pizza and grave-dirt.   
  
  
  
Oh, this one's done its homework. Not well enough, it turns out, but it's scored a direct hit.  
  
  
  
Xander holds on for dear life as what the demon thinks is the last of his strength runs out of him and into it.   
  
  
  
"Sorry, holy man," it whispers, then belies the sorrow with a greedy chuckle. It holds Xander closer, tighter, but not crushingly so. It wants to possess, not destroy. "But you're outta your league."   
  
  
  
"No,  _I'm_  sorry, Jess," Xander says, and tries not to feel like he's betraying his best friend.   
  
  
  
"Xand, Xand . . . you've got nothing to be sorry about," it croons. It thinks it's won, and therefore thinks it can afford to be magnanimous. "Just let go, and I promise everything'll be okay. Let go."   
  
  
  
"Whatever you say, bro." Xander exhales and lets go. . . .   
  
  
  
The elaborate glamours--Xander's and the demon's fall into tatters which blow away on the ceaseless wind like so much dust. The demon-that-would-be-Jesse stands reveled at last: a greasy, slithery piece of darkness with teeth for days and eyes the color of hunger.   
  
  
  
After a moment to absorb and understand, surprise and abject terror render it pitiful and small. Ridiculous, in the face of the prey it though to take so easily.   
  
  
  
Revealed at last, Xander wraps himself around the demon, who's begun to struggle far, far too late.   
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
An unknowable amount of time later, Xander sits semi-zazen, semi-comfortably on the hardpan, the wind whipping the jacket around him, tossing his hair like grit, tossing grit like confetti. It flies into his ears and eyes, up his nose, too, but that doesn't bother him.   
  
  
Breathing has nothing to do with his lungs, in this Place.   
  
  
  
And the howl of the wind is nothing compared to the howl of the demon flinging itself around the vast innerspace Xander's prepared for it.   
  
  
When howling doesn't get it any attention, it resorts to threatening, then gibbering.  
  
  
Then crying.   
  
  
The horrible thing is that it still sounds like Jesse. Like the summer Jesse fell out of the big oak tree in front of his house and broke his arm. He'd howled and moaned until he turned red--until Mrs. Wyler from across the street came out of her house to see what-all the racket was about.  
  
  
  
On the way to the hospital--in Mrs. Wyler's huge old LeSabre, zipping along at speeds upwards of six miles an hour--Jesse'd held Xander's hand so hard it hurt, his face a mess of tears and dirt and snot.   
  
  
  
He hadn't even brightened when Xander opined that if they had to cut the arm off, he'd probably get a cybernetic arm, like Robo-Cop. . . .  
  
  
  
Xander smiles a little, switching mindfully to full zazen and observing the bite and itch of the hardpan under his ass. Letting it pass through him like the wind. After a million years spent trekking across it, this glamour the Jesse-demon constructed, though one-dimensional, has grown on him. He doesn't quite have the heart to dismantle this final illusion.   
  
  
  
Zazen is the most comfortable position in which to pass short eternities, but soon enough, sooner than Xander will begin to tire of the sameness and sitting, the Jesse-demon will pass into silence and fade away like the others have. Most of the others, anyway. Xander can feel some them in there, the hybrids, small and inert, like black pebbles at the bottom of a still, dark pond.  
  
  
  
They've given up on finding a way out, on being heard. There isn't even a fading echo of the voices they'd once had.   
  
  
  
But this new voice happens to sound a lot like one of the best friends Xander'd ever had, and that makes it a hard voice not to listen to.   
  
  
A hard voice to condemn to an eternity of silent and absolute nothing--or wherever the demons go after they fade.  
  
  
  
Suddenly, pale-gold-bordering-on-platinum light flares around Xander, bright, clean . . . joyous. A Twinkler passes over him, through him, lighting up the darkness within, making the pebbles warble eerie, heart-breaking songs of hope . . . till the light passes on and they pass, once again, into silence.  
  
  
  
It drifts, last of all, over the Jesse-demon, and under the bright light of the Twinkler's examination it starts raising another ruckus. But that, too, tapers off into a bereft wail as the Twinkler flits out of Xander, taking away light and hope.   
  
  
  
Leaden darkness settles within and the demon, a malignant ball of concentrated force, begins to sob, ugly and too human for Xander's comfort. The Twinkler zips around excitedly, like a precocious, happy child that's had way too much sugar.   
  
  
Xander could wrap himself around it, too. Suck it in, and all of its kind. Store each Twinkler in its own dark, eternal nothing. . . .   
  
  
  
But he doesn't.   
  
  
  
A lot's changed since his Scooby days, but not that. Innocence is inviolate. To be protected, and treated kindly, patiently.   
  
  
  
Not that Xander would know much about innocence, anymore.  
  
  
  
"You  _so_  don't belong anywhere near me, kiddo," Xander tells it gently, but firmly. "Shoo."   
  
  
  
It hovers for a few more reluctant moments before, wonder of wonders, moving on.   
  
  
  
Shortly after--only a few thousand years later--the Jesse-demon's moans taper into whimpers, interspersed with maniacal giggles.  
  
  
  
Thence into silence, another bit of evil dissolved and absorbed by Xander’s void. Chalk another one up for the white hats.   
  
  
It's time to go back.   
  
  
  
Rejoining the waking world is as simple as sinking into his navel. The post-apocalyptic landscape around Xander flattens, begins to deconstruct.   
  
  
  
Darkens, except for a sudden pulse of pale gold that appears on the horizon, moving toward Xander with unusual speed and determination--settles around him then is gone between one confused blink and the next.   
  
  
  
But there's no time to worry or wonder, because the weight of a corporeal dimension settles on top of him.  
  



	5. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if Devil's Trap had ended differently? Written for the wonderful, the amazing, the tabaqui, one of my favoritest people in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own neither 'verse.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

Before the 'catch, there'd been a hand in his own, small and still. It'd made him think of holding hands with Willow forever ago. Before Buffy--before Jesse, even. When summers lasted forever, and school was just a horror story told by big kids.   
  
  
The possessed girl's name was Yuka. She had a pretty, trembly smile, a faint lisp and an insanely strong will that even the demon couldn't suppress for long. At least in the beginning.  
  
  
By the time Xander felt the pull west--literally hours after a 'catch in Scranton --she was starting to fade, the demon in control more often than not. It'd wreaked its fair share of horrors on her tiny body in the form of sores, lesions and skin turned the color of old gym socks.  
  
  
But from the moment Xander had taken her clammy hand, it was only a matter of time. In mere minutes, the demon had all but hurtled out of the little girl, her body and soul's last, desperate rally to oust the intruder. Xander was there to 'catch it, and instead of the demon simply repossessing her (which, according to her parents, had happened at least twice) it had battened onto Xander.  
  
  
Who was ready and waiting, dragging them both to the Other Place before the demon even realized what'd happened.  
  
  
It was lost the moment it barreled through the open doorway Xander had left for it.   
  
  
He sighs and sits up. The corduroy jacket that'd been covering him slips down to his lap, and he squints around. The room seems too dark and too bright all at once, shadowed corners alive with motion, empty air filled with winking lights. Impressions are layered one upon another like a crazy cake.  
  
  
He rubs his eyes, knowing the only thing for it is time to get used to the real world again. It takes time to remember how to be human after a ‘catch, longer and longer as the years go on. But pretending that what plagues his eyes and the rest of him is only physical is . . . comforting.  
  
  
"You're back." Low, smooth voice coming from the direction--what Xander  _thinks_  is the direction of the bathroom.  
  
  
"And then some." He tries to smile, blink away the lingering remnants of Sight so he can  _really_  see. He's been gone forever, and all he wants is a caring smile to make everything--not normal, because a) no such thing, and b) even if normal exists, it never will for either of  _them_ \--but okay. "How long was I gone for?"  
  
  
"'Bout seven minutes." Before Xander can squint him into being, Dean's sitting on the bed, all strong arms and familiar face. Familiar  _kisses_  that tastes like whiskey and wint-o-green . . . that Xander--as usual, after a catch--has to try very hard not to pull away from.  
  
  
Though Dean isn't as innocent as Yuka is, Xander would rather cut his right arm off than risk infecting him with the kind of evil that’s become part of him. Not that evil is--often--passed on by simple touch.  
  
  
"Seven. Minutes." He laughs, rapid-fire ha-ha-has that are totally fake. "Verily, I am a god among demon-catchers. A god!"  
  
  
Dean gives him a look that says  _you're obviously cracking up_ , but lets it pass without comment. "Yuka's parent's took her to the ER." He gestures around the empty room. But his hazel eyes search Xander's knowingly, till Xander has to lower his gaze.  
  
  
Making a comfortingly disagreeable grumbling sound, he pulls Xander into his arms, ignoring the initial freeze-flinch his touch causes.  
  
  
Dean's used to Xander pulling away from his touch just after, but he pretends not to notice or care. Makes it his job to invade Xander's personal space, headspace and heartspace, and move right on in.  
  
  
No matter how many times he has to do it, or how often.  
  
  
 _Why on Earth do you stay with me? This doesn't_ feel _like you just doing your duty, but why else would you stay?_  Xander wants to ask, but tucks his face into the crook of Dean's neck instead, content to be rocked and held. It always surprises him how  _good_ Dean is at taking care of him.  
  
  
Almost as much as it surprises him that, after one of the more taxing 'catches of his relatively brief career, he finds himself relaxing so quickly into and craving this embrace . . . like a man long shut up in a cave yearns for sunlight.  
  
  
"Jesus, you're shaking," Dean murmurs into Xander's hair, fingers lightly stroking down the ridges of Xander's spine. "Bad one?"  
  
  
"No. Yes. Maybe. One of those." Dean knows enough to wait, let Xander's brain catch up with his tongue. "It made itself look like someone I used to know."  
  
  
"At least it didn't pretend to be Willow, like that thing in Washington--" Dean pauses. As well he should. Lynnwood been a bitch for them both. "Or did it?"  
  
  
"No, it just--it tried to make me think it was Jesse. It was smart enough to pick someone that was already dead, yet dumb enough to pick someone I  _know_  it couldn't possibly be. It was still a shock to see Jesse’s face after all this time. . . ." Xander sighs. "But I knew going in the fight'd be dirty. The fight's  _always_  dirty."  
  
  
"Dirty’s the only way demons know how to play, Xand." Dean kisses the top of his head. "Hey--Mrs. Satou says thanks, by the way, with a promise to name her baby after you."  
  
  
Xander's shaking harder. It takes a moment to realize it's Dean's suppressed laughter that’s shaking them both.  
  
  
"Don’t laugh,” he chastises. “That poor kid'll be starting out at a deficit."  
  
  
"Well, I dunno now . . . LaVelle's a pretty name for a girl. . . ."  
  
  
"Horrible name for  _anyone_." Xander chuckles, and this time it feels and sounds more normal, if weary and strained.  
  
  
"What about little LaVelle's big sis? Shouldn't someone be keeping an eye on her? Some kinda Obi-Wan to make sure she doesn't grow up all . . . darkside?"  
  
  
Xander's smiles slightly. "Nah, she's had enough excitement for the next ten or so years. Anyways, the Powers have their eye on her. Whatever gifts she has'll manifest in their own time. And when the student's ready--or when the Powers want her to be ready--the teacher will appear."  
  
  
"Quoting  _Kung Fu_? Sexy as hell."  
  
  
Xander laughs for real this time, loud enough to startle them out of each others' arms. Dean's smiling that small but open smile that's all for him, that says Xander's still one of the white hats. That he  _done good._  
  
  
For once, he actually agrees.  
  
  
He doesn't usually feel that way after most catches--doesn't feel much of anything beyond empty and cold, like everything he does just may be pointless. Vaguely anxious that this time, those feelings won't fade as time passes. Over the past year, every 'catch seemed to take a little more out of him, made it a little harder to fill those empty places with something as simple and powerful as human affection, or faith that saving little girls from demons is making any kind of difference in the good v. evil free-for-all.  
  
  
But tonight is . . . different. There still may come a day when he can't fight the uphill battle anymore; when he's too far gone to be warmed and held, or care about the absence of such human comforts.  
  
  
Dean leans in till their foreheads touch and kisses him again, slow and thorough. Squeezes him so tight he can barely draw breath, and Xander thinks wonderingly:  _Today's not that day._  
  
  
"You think too much, Plato. Stop it."  
  
  
Xander  _hmms_  low in his throat, licking his lips and tasting . . . Dean. "You know, no one's ever accused me of that before." Has to follow that kiss up with a deeper, longer one. Brand that taste--whiskey, wint-o-green, salt and very faintly licorice--into his bones.  
  
  
"For real . . . are you okay, Xand?" Dean's hands are all over him, gentle and restrained, worried and wanting. "When you ‘catch, you’re usually quiet and dead-still . . . this time, you kept twitching and muttering about twinkles or Twinkies--some weird shit--"  
  
  
And that puts the kibosh on those warm-happy-horny feelings. He pulls away from Dean abruptly, ignoring the questioning look he receives. The last time he dragged 'catching into his waking life, he'd spent the better part of two months on as much haloperidol as Dean could force into him.  
  
  
That once was more than enough, and even though Xander wouldn't trade the end result for anything, he's also vowed never to put Dean through that kind of . . . craziness ever again.  
  
  
"Really, I'm okay." One more kiss, quick but hopefully reassuring, and Xander's levering himself up off the bed. "I mean, I've been better. But I've been much worse, too."  
  
  
"I know," Dean says softly, his eyes momentarily glinting grey with worry. Xander has to look away again.  
  
  
His legs are wobbly, but hold him up, and Dean knows better than to try to help him, or even steady him. Just watches him walk the pins and needles off with that amused, almost paternal air of indulgence that sets Xander's teeth on edge . . . and makes him want to turn that superior look into something a lot less controlled and aloof.  
  
  
Some of which must show on his face and in his eyes, because Dean's eyes narrow in speculation and challenge.  
  
  
"We’ve still got this room for hours and hours, though I’m sure we won't need ‘em seein' as you're so quick on the draw tonight, Speedy." Dean leans back on his elbows, watching Xander with a teasing curve oi the lips. "Seven minutes . . . that's gotta be a record."  
  
  
Xander lets desire uncurl from the pit of stomach to spread outward--his weary, discombobulated body's latest stab at  _normal_ \--warming the rest of him before pooling in lower, more interesting places. Lets it pull him back toward Dean and wash away more of that miles-distant, only-half-in-this-world feeling.  
  
  
It wouldn’t be the first time Dean’s fucked the feeling back into him and, Powers willing, it won’t be the last.   
  
  
"I'm not always quick on the draw. I've been known to take my time--when there's proper motivation."  
  
  
"Motivation, hunh?" Dean's half-smile turns into a grin as he toes his dusty boots off and pushes himself up the bed just enough so Xander can kneel between his legs. "And just what would a bright-eyed, young go-getter like yourself want in the way of motiva--sweet  _Jesus_. . . ."  
  
"No, it's  _Xander. Xaaaaann-der_ ," Xander says a smile twitching the corners of his mouth. Dean shoots him a  _die_  glare that's totally nullified by the way he's bucking up against the hand that's simultaneously unbuckling him and stroking him off.  
  
  
Seeing Dean like this sets fire to all the numb nerve-endings, bringing them fully  _back_  from that Place, where they were as relevant as a lungful of air. They clamor at Xander all at once, for attention, for tending, for nursing, for giving in to--and it's such an overload of feeling after so long without that the world starts to grow brighter, and grey out.  
  
  
"Xander--? Ah, shit--" Dean sits up in a blur of fiery color that radiates outward from the center of his chest and just between his eyebrows. Greens and golds for earth and sky. Steel-grey for the steadiness that even now keeps his mind running quick-silver fast at super-cooled temperatures.  
  
  
And red . . . red for passion and blood and heart--for Dean, who catches him as he sways forward.  
  
  
One hand tilts Xander's face up, till he’s staring into scared hazel eyes. Dean’s lips are moving. He's saying something, asking what’s wrong, and Xander smiles. Tries to be the reassuring one, for once.  
  
  
 _The light that's inside you is so beautiful. I never realized,_  he means to say, numb lips stumbling soundlessly over the words. _Everything's gonna be okay, now. It is. . . ._  
  
  
The last thing Dean's lips shape before they're drowned out by pale-gold light is:  
  
  
". . . Xander, I've got you. . . ."   
  
  


*

  
  
  
It's the cleanest greasy spoon Xander's ever seen, every surface gleaming a cheery, impersonal silver or white. As if the cook--who can't be older than eighteen, same for the waitress--doesn't use any actual grease.  
  
  
There isn't a sticky spot on the floor and even the bathroom exudes near-holy cleanness that makes Xander think of a sacristy.  
  
  
Utah boggles the mind, which may explain why he's feeling so off-kilter. Or maybe it's the weirdo giving him strange looks from across their booth.  
  
  
Dean's been staring at him for most of ten minutes, making the People's Eyebrow of Worry. Xander doesn't have to look away from his mess of pancakes, home fries, sausage and syrup to see. Not when he can feel the concern beating at him like an annoying stick.  
  
  
Sighing, he looks up, somewhere left and south of the Eyebrow. "What?"  
  
  
Now that he's acknowledged it, the Eyebrow becomes more pronounced, not less.  
  
  
"You've been picking at that plate for half an hour." Dean's eyes tick down to the pecked-at short stack, the sausages in their pathetic, rapidly congealing puddle of syrup and grease, then to his own demolished “dinner” and mostly finished dessert . . . then back to Xander. All the things that are unsaid-- _never said anything during a 'catch, never 'caught a demon so quickly, and for damn sure never_ passed out _after 'catching. What the hell happened?_ \--hang between them like condemned men on a gallows.  
  
  
Then Dean's eyes drift to their unused ashtray. Pink tip of his tongue comes out to wet his lips and the desire from earlier tickles Xander's keyed-up nerves endings briefly. "For fuck's sake, Xander, just eat it, already."  
  
  
"Now where have I heard that before?" Xander dredges up a limp half-smile when Dean rolls his eyes. Steals the last bite of Dean's pecan pie. Pretty good, even though it's barely warm, now. "Sorry, I'm just kinda--" exhausted, dazed, confused "--not hungry."  
  
  
"You?  _Not_  hungry?" Dean leans forward and puts a cool hand to his forehead. "Huh. You don't feel deathly ill. . . ."  
  
  
"We shoulda just stayed in the room and fucked around. This place is too bright, has too much . . . too many people," Xander finishes lamely, taking Dean's hand before it's gone, holding it to his cheek. Neither of them is big on PDAs, but every once in awhile--usually after Xander's 'caught something really nasty--Dean won't hesitate to show a little physical affection.  
  
  
"You needed to eat, Xand. To be someplace other than the motel room where you de-possessed a little girl and then devoured her demon. You needed to be around some  _normal_." Dean snickers when Xander takes a pointed look around the too-clean, non-greasy greasy-spoon and at the exactly two other people in it: the hyper-perky waitress and the cherub-faced cook, both of whom, on fourth glance, may not even be old enough to have working permits. "Well, what passes for, in the suburbs of Provo. Change of scenery'll even you out a bit."  
  
  
"Actually, it just makes me feel more like a freak," Xander mutters, and Dean turns his hand so that it's holding Xander's. He looks slightly pained, as unsure of how to offer comfort as Xander is how to accept it.  
  
  
Neither of them have the heart to admit to themselves, let alone each other that there's no real comfort ever to be found at the end of any of this, Xander supposes. Not in the corner booth of a diner and over sub-par flapjacks.  
  
  
"Anyways,” Xander cuts half a pancake into sixteenths, sneaking a glance at Dean through grown-out bangs. “Getting fucked through a motel mattress’d even me out a whole lot more. You’re way more filling than mediocre pancakes in a bizarro-diner."  
  
  
Not because he thinks he can bend Dean on this, but just to see the hungry, slightly regretful look in those changeable hazel eyes.  
  
  
The look that all too quickly changes to wry amusement.  
  
  
"If you like, we can get you all evened-out in the back of the pick-up right now . . . should I take that as a no?" Dean grins when Xander gives him the finger and shoves his hand away. "Alright, then. Eat your damn pancakes so we can shag ass."  
  
  
"Where to?" Xander asks around a mouthful of cold, syrupy okay-ness. He hasn't felt that imperative tug in his gut that means his particular services are needed as of yet, which means this little outting of Dean’s is off the Powers' radar. Which makes it something he definitely wants in on. "What's the up?"  
  
  
Dean signals the waitress for two more cups of coffee. A flash of that too-bright-for-two-am smile, and she’s bustling over to the coffee pot.  
  
  
Xander'll allow that--for a ten year old--the waitress makes a decent cuppa joe. The cook makes a nice slab of pie, too. Better than his pancakes, anyway.  
  
  
"Let's just say I found us little spot, up in the hills . . . quiet, good for star-gazing. . . ." Dean's expression is suspiciously bland, and half-hidden behind the last slurp of his coffee.  
  
  
“Is that so?” Xander asks, nudging Dean's boots with the tips of his sneakers. Dean nudges back, then brackets Xander's feet with his own.  
  
  
“Uh-huh." Perhaps in retaliation for the pie, Dean helps himself to five sixteenths of a pancake. As retaliations go, it's lukewarm at best, for he passes over the sausage, which is definitely the best thing on the plate.   
  
  
Best thing on the plate or not, the sausage has been soaking in syrup, rendering it inedible to Dean's discerning palate.  
  
  
"I'm tellin' you, it's the perfect place to get you back into that humanity groove." A sultry look from under his lashes as he licks syrup off the fork and off his lips. "That is . . . if you’re up for it."  
  
Xander clears his throat but does  _not_ , not even surreptitiously, adjust his jeans. He's not about to give Dean--who already has a way-too-accurate idea of how that look effects Xander--the satisfaction.  
  
  
But Dean, of course, already knows. Knows and is  _very_  satisfied with that knowledge, judging by the lazy, self-satisfied Winchester smile that’s half-challenge, half-sexual innuendo, and all but daring Xander to say:  
  
  
“I’m up for whatever you’ve got.”


	6. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if Devil's Trap had ended differently? Written for the wonderful, the amazing, the tabaqui, one of my favoritest people in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own neither 'verse.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-NFA by five years, post-Devil's Trap by two very AU years. Attendant spoilers.

"If you let that bloodsucker get  _one fang_  in you, I swear I'll kill you myself!"   
  
  
Between the inopportune return of the dizzy spell and Dean’s threat, Xander gets a little distracted--and a little tackled by a vampire that looks like he spent his life inhaling cream pies at warp nine. They hit the ground with a thud that knocks the wind out of one of them.  
  
  
Xander instinctively tries to push the vamp off, but no dice, even with all his struggling. Certainly not with his arms doing their best impersonation of Polly-O string cheese.  
  
  
The vampire grins jaggedly; its fangs are brownish pickets in the rickety fence of its mouth.   
  
  
"I'm gonna drink your  _soul_ ," it growls--lies, as vamps tend to do, not knowing that's it's talking to one of the very few beings in this dimension that could actually make good on such a threat. Then it's lunging for him like he's a buffet table, three hundred pounds of literally dead weight--  
  
  
\--all of which flies straight up Xander's nose, then right back out in titanic, hernial sneeze.   
  
  
"Gesundheit."  
  
  
"Thanks." Xander sneezes a few more times, then blinks until two of the three Deans glaring down at him resolve into one not-happy camper. Manages a weak grin as Dean grudgingly offers him a hand up.   
  
  
Xander's not a small man, but the ride up is almost instantaneous, and it ends in a shove that almost sends him tail-over-tea-kettle back to the ground.  
  
  
"What the fuck did you think you were doing? Didn't I tell you to stay in the truck?" Dean demands as Xander staggers backwards, then forwards. He almost falls on his face, thanks to the recurring vertigo that'd started somewhere between this glade and the over-lit diner.  
  
  
Would, if not for Dean's strength and reflexes.  
  
  
“Look at you . . . you can barely stand up without fallin’ over!”  
  
  
"I had him right where I wanted him," Xander says, somehow sounding less ruffled than he actually is. With Dean to play against, being the laconic half of their dynamic duo is frighteningly easy: just channel Oz and try not to say stupid, Xanderish things.  
  
  
Most times it works, but tonight is not one of those times. Dean's eyes are getting narrower with every passing nanosecond. He's got a good fistful of Xander's shirt and hauls him in for an up-close-and-personal stare-down.  
  
  
"I was softening him up for you? You're welcome, by the way." This close, that Winchester glare is closer to scary than it is sexy, especially joined, as it is, by its bosom buddy, the Winchester scowl.   
  
  
Having once tickled Dean to actual  _tears_ , Xander no longer fears the glare. Laughs in the face of it, and absolutely refuses to cave and apologize.  
  
  
"Look, there were too many of those assholes against too few you, and I was worried, okay? I'm sorry."  
  
  
So much for not caving.  
  
  
"Yeah, and sorry's gonna cut it if you end up dead, or turned?" Dean backs Xander toward the truck almost by sheer attitude alone, till his wobbly legs hit the fender. "Christ, I don't want you to be sorry, Xander, I want you to be  _careful_! And to stay in the goddamn truck when I tell you to  _stay in the goddamn truck_!"  
  
  
Dean sounds more than angry, he sounds  _scared_ \--but there's telltale strain around his eyes that says he's scared about more than just the vamps. His occasional lapses into bossy jerkdom notwithstanding, Dean Winchester's one of two people left on the planet who gives a shit about Xander.  
  
  
"We both know how well I take to being ordered around, even when it’s for my own good." Which is not well at all, nine years of being the Slayer's right hand aside. "Sometimes, just sometimes, the hero needs someone to watch his back. And it's not like I haven't been in a vamp kerfuffle before."  
  
  
" _Kerfuffle_? Xander--" Dean takes a deep breath then lets it out in a warm, exasperated gust of air as Xander pulls him into a hug. "We've had talks about this, Xand: hugs are not weapons."  
  
  
"Uh-huh, they are," Xander murmurs, making himself extra pliant and accommodating. Dean's arms settle around him without hesitation. "The most awesome weapon in my arsenal, aside from my sek-shee-ality."  
  
  
Dean makes a sound that could be a snorfle, could be a huff. "Fucker." His hands slide down to Xander's ass for a just-this-side-of-painful squeeze.  
  
  
"You wouldn’t be the first to think so. Won’t be the last . . . are we okay?” Xander leans back a little to search Dean’s eyes. He’s no mind-reader, but he’s got a near-empathic sense of when he’s being lied to. Not that Dean ever has or would.  
  
  
"We're  _always_  okay, Xander." Bright fathomless green, in the bright fathomless moonlight, Dean's eyes say things that make Xander doubt that no-bullshit-sense he’s had since Africa . Because though Dean’s still annoyed with him--unhappy about what he perceives as recklessness on Xander’s part--that annoyance all seems to come from a place of concern, and maybe. . . .  
  
  
"Do you even have a  _brain_  between those jug-handle ears of yours, or did the 'catching crowd it out?" Dean asks suddenly. All is forgiven, but his voice and arms turn uncomfortably tight for a moment. His aura is crackling burnt-orange at the edges--with pale, turbulent yellow edging toward the center, for eyes that can see that sort of thing. Unfortunately, Xander has exactly the kind of eyes that can see that sort of thing, just after a ‘catch. It’ll be days before it fades. "You decide you’re in vamp-fightin’ trim minutes after having a dizzy spell--what were you  _thinking_? Were you thinking at all?"  
  
  
"Baby, you know I leave the thinking to you." Sugar-sweet submission that's totally over the top, but takes some of the sarcastic wind out of Dean's angry sails.  
  
  
"I shoulda just taken you back to the motel before I came out here," he mutters, then pushes Xander back, just hard enough to sit him on the bed of the truck. He’s brisk and business-like in checking for breaks and scrapes. As penance for his, ahem, recklessness, Xander sits silently through it, pretending the touches are more naughty-nurse, and less triage-nurse . . . though his instinct is to fidget and call Dean  _mom_. "If you left the thinking to me, your ass'd stay in the damn truck when I tell you."  
  
  
"Dean--I said I'm sorry I scared you, but I won’t say I’m sorry for trying to help you. And I  _did_  dust two of them before I got jumped. You saved my life again, but I probably saved yours, too. Again."  
  
  
There's another stare-down, but this time, Xander's not participating. He shrugs Dean's hands off him and looks up at the bright, kaleidoscope-whirly sky overhead until Dean stalks off to gather their weapons, still muttering curses.  
  
  
Going on past experience, he'll be moody till they get back to the motel. After a few minutes of stewing in the shower alone, he may actually smile when Xander climbs in to join him.   
  
  
And since nothing was bruised—at least not badly—or broken, shower sex  _will_  ensue.  
  
  
Xander grins up at the sky. Some people think the stars are uncaring, cold, distant. And they are, but everything seems friendlier with shower sex on the horizon. And such a beautiful horizon it is.  
  
  
Say what you will about Utah--and Xander's said some things . . . at length . . . until Dean was ready to strangle him--there's no denying it has some pretty patches of sky. Pretty enough to make a man feel like he's never  _really_  seen the stars before. Enough to make him ponder the big questions in life.  
  
  
 _Who am I? Where am I going? Am I going there alone? Where's the beef?_  
  
  
Speaking of, Xander realizes he's passing up prime ass-ogling time, and he lowers his gaze from the heavens and leans back on his elbows to watch the show as Dean picks up the knives and the shotgun. Stows them in the cab of the truck. His blue jeans are faded, tight enough to give Xander the down-low tingle, yet not tight enough to take him back to the Basement of Doom.  
  
  
 _Damn_  good stuff. "Have I ever mentioned how incredibly hot you are when you're cleansing the world of evil?"  
  
  
This time, the noise is  _definitely_  a huff. "Dude, you have issues I try really hard not to dwell on."  
  
  
"Right back atcha, cowboy."  
  
  
From across the glade Dean shoots him a look; three stakes--that Xander had carved--and a bowie knife that belongs to neither of them are cradled in his arms like babies. Pointy, dusty, bloody babies. "Okay, we've had a talk about hugs. Do we need to have a talk about nicknames, too?"  
  
  
Xander blows Dean a kiss, and swings his legs restlessly. Offering to help gather their weapons would be pointless. Besides having a huge lone-wolf complex, Dean also has a tendency to think of Xander as being completely helpless if he so much as gets a paper cut.  
  
  
Reckless? Maybe, but definitely not helpless. A man who can swallow demonic spirits and souls at will is many things, but never helpless.  
  
  
"Well, at least we got the last of that nest," Dean says. He’s the Mr. Brightside of their duo, and the predatory satisfaction in his voice is always a turn on. "Biggest damn one I've seen since. . . ." he trails off, but Xander’s already looking up at the stars again, without even seeing them.   
  
  
Lynnwood had the largest nest of vamps Xander’d seen outside of Sunnydale--with Buffy as acting sheriff, there were  _never_  nests that big unless some new and amazingly stupid coven moved into town looking to start shit on the Slayer’s turf--and they'd literally stumbled into it, following Xander’s gut to the young woman the Powers wanted de-possessed.  
  
  
Who’d happened to be the coven master's consort.  
  
  
Dean and two other hunters--one of whom hadn't made out alive or undead--had barely kept the vamps off of Xander till the 'catch was over. And even with a conscious and armed Xander, they’d still been out-manned, so to speak, till Xander'd had a fucking brilliant idea.  
  
  
Yeah, Lynnwood was the first and only time he’d ever caught hybrids. Seventeen of them, and in rapid succession. It’d been almost too easy, sucking in any vamp that got past Dean and Corrine Running Bear. Damn near every non-human threat he and Dean had run across went for Xander first, anyway. . . .  
  
  
After that little dust-up, he'd had spent two all-expenses paid months in Nervous Breakdown Land, forcing Dean and Corrine to eventually seclude all three of them in a bare-bones, one-room cabin that’d been in Corrine’s family for three generations.  
  
  
Dean only ever left to steal sedatives and anti-psychotics. But he never left for long and he  _never_  left Xander alone.  
  
  
And so they learned that ‘catching vampires is different than 'catching other demons. They’re much, much easier, for one thing, and vampires Xander had 'caught turned immediately to dust. For another thing, the demons  _souls_ \--the only word Xander could use to describe them--folded in on themselves, compressed into small dark pebbles, hidden in the darkest corners of Xander’s self.  
  
  
But those pebbles had screamed and screamed for weeks, and when they finally became inert the reverb . . . lingered. The pebbles themselves, however, never faded away.  
  
  
There are still seventeen of them, as solid and present as the day Xander caught them, and they'll be there till the day Xander dies--  
  
  
"Thankfully,  _these_  vamps were a buncha dumbasses."  
  
  
Xander forces himself back to the present as Dean picks up a huge, showy-ugly knife that's also neither of theirs, holds it up for Xander to see. They both roll their eyes and Dean pitches the stupid thing into the woods. "I rest my case. Tacky bloodsuckers."  
  
  
"Totally not a match for the ambiguously gay duo."  
  
  
"I've got an armful of sharp, killy things and you pick now to try my patience? You're obviously not that bright. Yet another reason I shouldn't have let you tag along with me tonight--"  
  
  
" _Tag along? Let?_ " Xander's trying for dangerously soft, but there's a laugh in his voice that Dean picks up on. Which of course allows him to ignore the fact that he’d all but dragged Xander on this hunt, talking up all the vamp killing they’d do. That is until the first wave of intense vertigo had Xander crumpled up on the floor of the truck and trying not to think scary acronyms like  _MRI_  and _CAT-scan_. “So you didn’t practically drag me here at gun-point . . . you let me tag along?”  
  
  
"That's right, Tag along Cassidy." Dean's the one who's grinning, now. That too-pretty mouth is somehow prettier because of all the sexy smugness and leering. " _Let you_. Just like I might  _let_  you walk back to the motel, unless you can gimme a real good reason not to."  
  
  
This sudden change of mood? Is Dean returning to their brand of “normal”. He’s usually a little moody and a lot horny after a good slay. Though the moodiness seems to have passed, there’s  _definitely_  shower sex in the near future. "So, the punishment for nearly getting myself killed, would be  _actually_  getting myself killed? There’s a fine example of tough but fair. If you’re a crazy person.”  
  
  
"Never claimed it was  _fair_." Dean's voice is distracted as he strides past Xander to the front of the truck. There's a wooden rattle as the stakes join their unused brethren in Xander's duffle, then the crunch of boots on gravel again as Dean ambles to the back of the bed, still grinning. "Either way, I get to stake you in the end."  
  
  
"Classy. I swear, you're gonna turn my head with all this high-toned flatt--" Xander's impending babble is thankfully cut off by Dean's mouth on his, soft and lingering.  
  
  
Warm--and slightly grubby, but Xander's mostly beyond caring--hands slide under his t-shirt. Strong and calloused, but gentle as they touch his ribs, Dean's fingers probe for injuries while causing ice-fire tingles that make every hair on Xander's body stand up.  
  
  
"You ever,  _ever_  pull a stupid stunt like that again, Harris, and I'll beat you black and blue."  
  
  
”Yeah. . . .” Xander sighs, visions of Dean spanking him dancing merrily through his head. “Please tell me you’ve got some slick in the glove compartment?”  
  
  
Dean pulls back to give him a look that’s half-sheepish and half-defensive. “No, I mean--we were gonna eat pancakes then slay vampires, so  _no_ , I didn’t bring any fuckin’--shut the fuck up and don’t change the subject, Xander. Black. And fucking. Blue.” Dean punctuates the threat with kisses. Or tries to, it’s kind of hard to kiss someone who’s snorfling.  
  
  
"Promises, promises--hey!" Xander gasps when Dean pushes him down to the none-too-clean truck bed and straddles his legs. While scowling down at him and grinding against him simultaneously. It’s very confusing to the part of Xander that can still make with the thinking. He's uncertain what kind of response Dean expects: awkwardly contrite, awkwardly horny or some freakish combination of the two.  
  
  
"You know, you're sending some really mixed sig--" he accuses before he's once more being silenced in one of only two ways that have proven effective. Dean still tastes like pecans and maple syrup--and it’s a damn sight better on him than on those mediocre pancakes.  
  
  
Now if Provo only had an IHOP. . . .  
  
  
 _Wait--what am I thinking?_ Everywhere _has an IHOP_. "Mm . . . we should-- _so_ \--find an IHOP before we go back to the motel. . . ."  
  
  
"You talk  _way_  too much," Dean murmurs, then kisses him harder. It's not the first time he's said that. And not the first time Xander's been distracted by thoughts of pancakes at less-than-apropos moments.  
  
 _Well, that's hardly my fault when Dean’s the one who tastes like syrupy goodness,_  he reasons, but plays innocent, and tries to completely banish all thoughts of pancakes. "Is there something else you'd rather I use my mouth for?"  
  
  
The irritation lightens into surprised consideration. Dean’s eyebrows are halfway to his hairline. "You offerin'?"  
  
  
Xander nods, and grabs Dean's belt by the buckle. He could undo it single-handedly, but holds off. Negotiation is a fine art, and it wouldn't do to appear too eager. "But you have to buy me pancakes after."  
  
  
"You've got a one track mind, Xand. Fine." Dean rolls his eyes again, heaves the sigh of the long suffering, but lets himself be tugged back down onto Xander. "But if I'm buying you pancakes after, I better get a hell of a lot further than third base before."  
  
  
"I'm covered in vamp-dust--which I'll be horking up for a week, thanks--you've repeatedly belittled my finely-honed intellect, and my ears . . . keep it up and I won’t even  _let_  you dry hump me in the back of this truck, mister, forget sucking your dick for the low, low price of pancakes."   
  
  
"Yeah, yeah, cry me a river." Dean's lips are quirking in that sexy-smug way. They both know Xander’s threat is empty. One appetite temporarily sated, Xander's other appetite would have him climbing Dean like a tree, anyway.  
  
  
Then they're kissing again, slow and easy. This is still one of the most amazing things about Dean: the way he kisses. As if he's content to do nothing but kiss forever. That's way more surprising than his rarely heard singing voice, yet not as surprising as his obscene love of anything peach-flavored.  
  
  
"Hey. Captain IHOP." Dean's eyes are right above his, his lips still close enough that each word feels like one of those unhurried, kisses, and the grinding makes Xander's eyes try their damnedest to roll back into his head. "Wanna continue this back at the motel? We can even get your pancakes first if you’re still hungry--"  
  
  
"The pancakes can wait till morning," Xander decides, magnanimously re-prioritizing. "To the Mountain Sunset Motor-Lodge, Jeeves, and don’t spare the horses!"  
  
  
Dean groans, backing off the truck and off of Xander. “Christ, the things I put up with for love.”  
  
  
“You  _do_  have an unusually high tolerance for my bullshit, and--wait,  _what_  did you just say?” But Xander already knows; that look in Dean’s eyes—one that Xander’s been seeing increasingly for months--is a mystery solved, now.  
  
  
Dean takes Xander’s unresisting hands and pulls him off the truck, into his arms for another stare-down, one that Xander can't get out of. “I love you. Got a problem with that?”  
  
  
Taken totally off-guard, Xander’s grown-up enough that he doesn’t stammer, doesn’t open his mouth to make a stupid, inappropriate joke. But he’s never been on this end of an oddly-timed declaration of love. He’s sure he wouldn’t know the appropriate response if it bit him on the ass.  
  
  
“I--“ maybe if it’d been said during an apocalypse, or at least during a really dicey fight, Xander’d know what to say to banish the shadowy uncertainty that’s growing behind Dean’s eyes. But now, when they’re both healthy and safe, what could he possibly say to halt it?  _I love you, too_?  
  
  
The second realization of the night, and possibly the second biggest of his life after discovering the demon-catching thing, hits like a ton of bricks. For some reason, the idea of love--the in-love kind--between himself and Dean was unfathomable even moments ago.  
  
  
In-love was a feeling he’d left buried with Anya, in Sunnydale.  
  
  
The rest of his feelings had burned out under the African sun, and a nifty pipeline to the Powers That Be had been installed in their place. Fast forward three years and Dean is the Seer’s champion,  _Xander’s_  champion and not so incidentally his lover . . . but his beloved?  
  
  
That pale light that’s been hovering at the extreme edges of Xander’s sight--and his Sight--whispers and gutters platinum with every beat of his heart. Fitfully, but more surely with every passing second now, till it’s softly glowing, illuminating darkened places, making a certainty of so many small mysteries.  
  
  
Dean loves him. Loves the man he once held responsible for the shit that went down in Lynnwood . . . for Bobby Singer’s death.  
  
  
“You don’t have to say it back, Xand, but don’t look like I just killed your puppy, either,” Dean jokes, and if Xander wasn’t suddenly seeing him with newly-opened eyes, he’d believe that bullshit-casual voice and easy smile and oh, God, Dean  _loves_  him. That love shines with its own warm, rose-gold light that somehow,  _somehow_ , Xander’s mis-seen and mis-read for far too long.  
  
  
”I love you, too.” As he says it, the glowing within him flares to an intense and sustained glow, like the heart of a sun. It  _burns_  for Dean. For his love, for his touch, for his closeness in every possible way.  
  
  
Even with newly-opened eyes, he nearly misses the flicker of wary relief in Dean’s eyes, the way the tension flows out of his shoulders then returns just as quickly. “You don’t have to say--I’m just telling you because it seems like the kinda thing you should know, you know? In case anything ever happens to either of--“  
  
  
“Dean, stop.” Xander laughs, can’t help it because Dean is  _babbling_  and Dean  _never_  babbles. “I. Love. You. I love you and I’ll say it all night, if  _that_ ’s what you want me to do with my mouth--“  
  
  
“Yeah, okay, Jerry Maguire, I believe you. That motel room ain’t gettin’ any nearer.” Dean drags Xander to the front of the truck, hustles him into the passenger seat and buckles him in--with lots of necessary unnecessary fondling, and eye contact.  
  
  
For long moments after Xander’s buckled in, Dean is still standing, staring up into his face, smiling absently.  
  
  
“God, I wanna make love to you,” he lets out in a rasping rush then scowls and clears his throat. “’Kay, what I  _meant_  to say was: I’m gonna tie you to the bed and find out just how many times I can make you come before check-out.”  
  
  
Rose-gold love-light spreads through Xander, takes him over . . . alarmingly bright for having been so long gone. “Either. Both. Tie me up or tie me down, just--don’t let me go.”  _Don’t let me be cold and empty again. . . ._  
  
  
Dean touches his face, calloused fingertips lingering at cheek and lips briefly. “Not any time soon, I promise.” Then he’s gone, but climbing into the driver’s seat a few seconds later. The warmth of his fingers hasn’t even faded from Xander’s cheek, and he’s still grinning as he starts the truck.  
  
  
Then swearing when the engine doesn’t turn over on the first few tries.  
  
  
“Your truck’s a piece of shit, Xander.”  
  
  
“I love you, too, Dean.”  
  
  
And it’s gotta be the real thing, because Dean doesn’t glare at him, just keeps grinning like he’s hit the jackpot.  
  
  
 _Yes_ , Xander finally understands, one epiphany on the heels of the other.  _This is what’s been missing since Washington , since Africa , since Sunnydale. Since further back than I can remember. But it’s back--Dean brought it back and I’m not empty and dark inside. I’m warm and full and_ bright--  
  
  
So bright, in fact, that as he leans over to kiss Dean, he can still see the heart-and-soul, rose-and-gold flare with every blink. All is revealed, floor and ceiling, corner and cavern. All the dark places are no longer dark, lit up with love and hope.  
  
  
And the obsidian surfaces of seventeen separate points of darkness, after eight months entombed in total nothing, take on a faint reddish hue that is soon matched by a hungry yellow-gold counterpoint from their deep, dormant cores.  
  



End file.
